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CHICAGO 


By  H.  C.  CHATFIELD-TAYLOR 

DRAWINGS  BY 

LESTER  G.  HORNBY 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXVII 


^\1 


r> 


COPYRIGHT,    1917,    BY   HOBART   C.    CHATrlELD. TAYLOR    AND    LKSTSR   G.    HORNBY 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Puhlixhfd  December  iQty 


Site  of  Old  Fort  Dearborn 


Contents 


I.  The  River  of  the  Portage 

II.  The  Heart  of  the  City  . 

III.  The  Great  West  Side 

IV,  The  South  Side 
V.  The  North  Side 

VI.  The  Soul  of  the  City 


23 

47 

67 
89 

113 


5032-14 


Field  Museum,  Jackson  Park 


■\-mi. 


Illustrations 


The  Water  Tower  .....  i 

Rush  Street  at  the  Bridge  {colored)  Frontispiece 

Site  of  Old  Fort  Dearborn    .          .          .  v 

Field  Museum,  Jackson  Park  .          .          .  vii 

The  Cathedral,  Washington  Street      .  ix 

A  River  Warehouse          .         .         ,          .  i 

State  Street  from  the  Van  Buren  Loop 

Station        ......  4 

Chicago  River  from  Rush  Street  Bridge  10 

Site  of  the  Fort  Dearborn  Massacre    .  14 

vii 


Illustrations 


The     Canon     of     Quincy     Street     from 
Fifth  Avenue        .  .  .  .  .20 

A  Bit  of  Old  Wabash  Avenue  .  .     23 

From  the  Viaduct  —  The  Loop  Station 
AT  West  Randolph  Street  .  .  .26 

The    Board    of    Trade    Building    from 
LaSalle  Street   .  .  .         .         .28 

The  Market  in  South  Water  Street     .  30 

Michigan  Avenue  from  Grant  Park        .  36 

LaSalle  Street  at  the  Stock  Exchange  40 

Michigan    Boulevard   South    from    qth 


Street  ..... 

In  Old  Washington  Street 

The  Old  "Marble-Fronts"  of  Washing- 
ton Street  ..... 

The  Church  at  Union  Park    . 

Michigan  Boulevard  at  the  Art  Insti- 
tute    ...... 

In  the  Stockyards  .... 

The  Douglas  Monument 

The  Library    ..... 

Columbus  Caravels  of  1892  near  La  Ra 
BiDA  Convent        .... 

viii 


42 
47 

50 
54 

67 

70 

74 
80 

84 


^he  Cathedral,  W ashhigton  Street 


Illustrations 


Where  the  Lake  Shore  Drive  begins 
In  Clark  Street  at  the  Court  House 
Rush  Street  in  the  Old  Residential  Sec 

TION        ...... 

In  Lincoln  Park      .... 

The  Skyline  of  Park  Row 

Washington  Street  looking  East  from 
Clark  Street       .... 

Park  Row  at  the  Railway  Station 


89 

102 

106 
108 

I  20 
124 


A  River  Warehouse 


I.    T'he  River  of  the  Portage 


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CHICAGO 


I 

THE  RIVER  OF  THE  PORTAGE 

ONE  night,  after  a  supper  given  by 
Richard  Mansfield  to  Coquelin  the 
Inimitable,  I  stood  beside  Sarah  Bernhardt 
on  the  balcony  of  a  Chicago  hotel.  The 
moon  had  laid  a  silver  trail  across  the  lake, 
the  buildings  of  the  city  loomed  shadowy 
in  the  night.  Below  us  blazed  the  lights 
of  Michigan  Avenue  ;  from  its  pavement 
came  the  rumble  of  many  cabs  speeding 
to  places  of  revelry.  A  moment  of  silence 
had  come  to  appease  the  fatigue  of  speak- 
ing in  a  foreign  tongue ;  but  it  was  broken 
by  the  surpassing  woman  beside  me.  "  I 
adore  Chicago,"  she  exclaimed.  "It  is  the 
pulse  of  America." 

3 


Chicago 

For  fifteen  years  that  tribute  to  my 
native  city  has  been  ringing  in  my  ears; 
—  and  now  when  my  task,  is  to  write  of 
its  life,  both  new  and  old,  those  words 
of  Sarah  Bernhardt  come  impulsively  to 
mind  as  the  best  with  which  to  character- 
ize its  individuality  among  the  cities  of 
the  world. 

"  A  little  upstart  village,"  an  English 
traveler  called  Chicago  at  the  time  when 
the  building  of  the  Illinois  and  Michigan 
Canal  was  begun.  Barely  a  decade  after 
the  first  boat  had  passed  through  its  locks, 
our  city  contained  a  hundred  thousand  en- 
ergetic souls;  and  now,  just  eighty  years 
since  the  first  spadeful  of  earth  was  turned 
for  the  digging  of  that  momentous  ditch,  it 
houses  well  considerably  two  million  men, 
women,  and  children  foregathered  from 
practically  every  land  on  earth.  The  new- 
est great  City  of  the  newest  great  Coun- 
try, it  is  the  held  in  which  industrial  wars 

4 


State  Street  from  the  Van  Buren  Loop  Station 


•fMY' 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

are  fought  and  civic  experiments  tested 
—  the  crucible  in  which  a  most  dispro- 
portionate mixture  of  native  and  alien 
manhood  is  fused  into  American  citizen- 
ship. May  not  this  municipality  which  has 
grown  from  a  little  upstart  village  to  a 
huge  upstart  city  within  the  ken  of  some 
born  within  its  limits,  who  are  still  in  the 
land  of  the  living,  be  termed,  without  un- 
due bravado,  "  The  pulse  of  America  "? 

To  the  stranger  within  her  gates  the 
most  forbidding  part  of  Chicago  is  the  re- 
gion of  dilapidated  buildings  and  ill-paved 
streets  adjoining  the  Rush  Street  Bridge. 
Yet  this  rookery  is  the  part  of  our  city  best 
entitled  to  be  qualified  as  old,  for  here  is 
the  seat  of  a  history  vying  in  age  with 
almost  any  in  the  land.  Here,  too,  is  the 
main  reach  of  the  river  whence  sprang  the 
city's  greatness  and  from  which  it  takes  its 
name. 

Once  it  flowed  turbid  into  the  lake;  now 

5 


Chicago 

it  runs  lucid,  albeit  artificially,  to  the  Mis- 
sissippi. Yet  to  the  casual  beholder  it  has 
ever  been  unprepossessing,  even  the  sav- 
ages u'ho  first  beheld  it  dubbing  it  the 
"Checagou,"  or  "River  of  the  Wild  Onion." 
The  name  bears  another  interpretation, 
however,  more  pleasing  to  our  pride,  the 
word  "Checagoe,"  according  to  one  philol- 
ogist, at  least,  meaning  something  "great" 
or  "strong."  Since  it  more  aptly  typifies 
the  city  on  its  banks,  may  not  this  inter- 
pretation of  the  name  of  our  river  be  ac- 
cepted in  lieu  of  the  one  which  has  long 
tarnished  our  fame?  But  this  plea  is  lead- 
ing me  afield. 

Innumerable  ages  before  the  kindly 
Illinois  were  driven  from  its  shores  by  the 
ruthlessly  efficient  Iroquois,  or  before  the 
«  canoe  folk,"  as  the  Pottawattomies  were 
called,  had  first  dipped  their  paddles  into 
its  waters,  the  Checagou  began  flowing 
into  our  stormy  lake.   Its  source  was  near 

6 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

a  muddy  pond,  a  dozen  or  so  miles  from 
its  mouth,  and  its  course,  till  it  met  its 
affluent,  was  toward  the  Polar  Star;  then 
for  about  a  mile  it  flowed  eastward,  but 
until  the  Anglo-Saxon  came  with  dredge 
and  pier,  a  bar  created  by  the  storms  of 
winter  made  it  trickle  into  the  lake  near 
where  the  Art  Institute  now  stands. 

After  its  junction  with  the  river  Guarie, 
as  its  prosaic  northern  branch  was  once 
called,  its  left  bank  was  wooded,  but  gen- 
erally its  shores  were  soggy  and  flat.  In 
truth,  it  was  a  forbidding  creek,  and  quite 
insignificant,  too,  even  to  the  Indian  on 
its  banks,  till  he  discovered  that  its  source 
lay  but  a  portage  away  from  a  beauti- 
ful stream  flowing  toward  the  Father  of 
Waters. 

On  the  long  journey  from  the  great 
lake  to  the  great  river,  this  meant  less 
shouldering  of  his  canoe  ;  therefore,  in- 
stead of  trudging  across  the  sun-scorched 

7 


Chicago 

prairie,  he  paddled  up  our  river  to  its 
source,  carried  his  birch-bark  craft  to  the 
River  of  the  Plains,  then  glided  on  its 
waters  to  the  Divine  River,  as  the  Illinois 
was  called  by  Sieur  Louis  Joliet,  our  dis- 
coverer. 

For  a  century  and  a  half  the  white  man 
followed  the  trail  the  red  man  had  trod; 
then  he  dug  a  canal  along  the  route  of 
the  portage  and  dredged  away  the  sand- 
bar that  prevented  the  Wild  Onion  River 
from  flowing  freely  into  the  lake.  When 
the  vessels  which  had  brought  merchan- 
dise to  the  little  trading-post  at  its  mouth 
began  to  reload  their  holds  with  prairie 
grain  borne  to  their  very  hatches  by  the 
boats  of  the  new  canal,  Chicago,  the  city 
of  destiny,  arose  overnight. 

Strange  that  intrepid  Louisjoliet  should 
have  foreseen  its  commercial  future!  "It 
will  be  possible  to  go  from  Lake  Erie  to 
the  Mississippi  by  a  very  good  navigation," 

8 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

he  informed  his  government.  "There 
would  be  but  one  canal  to  make."  The 
making  of  that  one  canal  inaugurated 
Chicago's  prosperity;  yet  nearly  two  cen- 
turies and  a  half  after  Joliet  wrote  those 
prophetic  words,  his  dream  has  come  but 
partially  true,  it  being  still  impossible  for 
boats  of  a  commercial  size  to  pass  from 
Lake  Erie  to  the  Mississippi.  The  water- 
way project,  however,  which  he  outlined 
to  the  authorities  of  New  France  has  be- 
come a  political  question  to  those  of  Illi- 
nois. Perhaps  within  another  two  centu- 
ries and  a  half  his  dream  may  be  realized 
to  the  full. 

May  the  ship  canal  which  one  day  makes 
Chicago  a  thriving  seaport  bear  his  name, 
both  honor  and  justice  making  it  his  right- 
ful due.  He  captained  the  first  band  of 
white  men  who  paddled  down  our  river, 
and  he  foresaw  our  greatness ;  yet  Mar- 
quette, his  missionary  chaplain,  and   the 

9 


Chicago 

chevalier  de  La  Salle,  his  successor  in  pio- 
neering, have  been  unduly  honored  at  his 
expense.  Henri  de  Tonty,  too,  the  Nea- 
politan soldier  of  fortune,  whose  courage, 
loyalty,  and  tact  long  held  our  land  for 
the  crown  of  France,  is  another  hero  of 
our  romantic  past  neglected  by  our  build- 
ers of  monuments  and  namers  of  streets. 

But  in  berating  historic  justice  for  the 
slowness  of  her  pace,  I  am  forgetting  our 
ugly  river.  When  ill  unto  death  upon  its 
banks,  Pere  Marquette,  the  zealot,  called 
it  the  "  River  of  the  Portage,"  a  prettier 
and  more  appropriate  name  by  far  than 
"Wild  Onion."  Yet  a  moment  ago  I  spoke 
of  it  as  our  ugly  river.  It  was  a  sop  to 
popular  opinion,  I  confess,  since  to  me  it 
is  beautiful  —  a  river  of  infinite  mystery 
rimmed  by  material  might. 

Thus  it  appears  in  the  glow  of  a  fading 
day,  when  the  massive  symmetry  of  the 
warehouses  upon  its  banks  is  mellowed  by 

lO 


Chicago  River  from  Rush  Street  Bridge 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

the  smoke  of  its  industry,  and  the  white 
ships  at  its  wharves  are  crimsoned  by  the 
sun's  last  rays.  Indeed,  I  seldom  cross  the 
Rush  Street  Bridge  afoot  without  stopping 
to  gaze  at  this  alluring  river,  and  to  dream 
of  the  changes  time's  magic  has  wrought. 
If  the  air  be  calm,  and  the  smoke  curl 
eerily  about  the  giant  buildings,  I  seem  to 
hear,  above  the  clanging,  hissing  noises  of 
the  city,  the  click  of  the  pioneer's  axe,  the 
war-cry  of  the  painted  savage.  The  huge 
warehouses  and  the  towering  office  build- 
ings seem  to  vanish  in  the  gray  evening 
mist,  while  in  their  place  appears  brown 
prairie  land  stretching  unbroken  to  the 
setting  sun.  Through  it  the  river  threads 
its  glowing  way  ;  yet  even  at  the  vision- 
ing  twilight  hour  it  is  hard  to  realize  that 
Indians  once  spread  their  tepees  on  its 
shores  and  sowed  their  golden  corn,  hard 
to  picture  the  swift  canoes  of  voyageur  and 
priest  gliding  down  its  silent  reaches. 

1 1 


Chicago 

Yet  once  the  land  where  Chicago  stands 
was  a  prairie  wilderness  for  which  success- 
ive tribes  of  red  men  battled,  and  once, 
for  a  century,  it  was  under  the  lilied  ban- 
ner of  France.  By  right  of  conquest  it 
passed  to  a  witless  king,  to  remain  under 
his  scepter  till  a  handful  of  his  rebellious 
subjects,  led  by  a  prescient  young  soldier, 
wrested  it  from  him.  Then  our  river's  life 
of  energy  began. 

Near  the  sand-spit  at  its  mouth  stood  the 
lonely  cabin  of  the  negro.  Point  de  Saible, 
earliest  inhabitant  of  record.  For  a  song 
he  sold  it  to  Joseph  Le  Mai,  coureur  du  hois 
turned  trader;  in  the  mean  time  Antoine 
Ouilmette,  a  fellow  Frenchman,  married 
a  squaw  and  built  himself  a  cabin  a  goodly 
stone's-throw  away. 

One  day,  "a  big  canoe  with  wings,"  as 
the  wondering  Indians  called  her,  anchored 
at  the  river's  mouth,  and  began  to  unload 
both  soldiers  and  supplies.   Trees  of  a  vir- 

12 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

gin  forest  were  felled,  a  blockhouse,  bar- 
racks, and  stockade  of  logs  were  built,  the 
flag  of  a  newly  born  nation  was  unfurled; 
then  John  Kinzie,  "  the  father  of  Chicago," 
bought  Le  Mai's  log  house,  and  began  to 
barter  tobacco  and  rum  for  peltries  and 
corn. 

Under  good  Captain  John  Whistler,  its 
builder  and  first  commander,  Fort  Dear- 
born, as  the  new  post  was  called,  was  peace- 
able, but  with  the  coming  of  his  tactless 
successor,  the  Indians  its  guns  were  meant 
to  awe  became  defiant.  When  a  senseless 
war  broke  out  between  our  new  nation 
and  its  mother  land,  they  daubed  upon 
their  cheeks  the  black  paint  which  augured 
death  and  chanted  their  terrifying  songs. 

When  the  soldiers  of  the  little  garrison 
marched  forth  with  their  women-folk  in 
fatuous  retreat  one  scorching  August  day, 
the  Indians  escorted  them  along  the  lake 
shore  till    the   feathered  heads  of  fellow 

13 


Chicago 

savages  peered  above  the  yellow  summits 
of  a  cluster  of  sand  dunes;  then  they  dug 
heel  into  their  ponies  and  galloped  away. 

A  brave  frontiersman  who  knew  their 
treacherous  ways  waved  his  hat  in  warn- 
ing; an  incompetent  captain  ordered  his 
men  to  charge.  They  obeyed  valiantly, 
though  outnumbered  ten  to  one.  Sniping 
from  behind  the  dunes  till  the  ranks  of  the 
soldiers  were  thinned,  the  blood-lusting  In- 
dians rushed  with  tomahawk  and  knife 
upon  the  women  and  children  huddling 
beneath  the  white  canopies  of  army  wag- 
ons. At  the  end  of  fifteen  agonizing  min- 
utes the  soldiers  still  alive  surrendered  to 
their  savage  enemies,  who  danced  on  the 
morrow  in  triumph  about  the  smoulder- 
ing embers  of  the  little  fort. 

That  skirmish  of  barely  more  than  a 
century  ago  Chicago  has  called  its  "Mas- 
sacre," and  a  monument  depicting  it  has 
been  erected  at   the   corner  of  Calumet 

14 


Site  of  the  Fort  Dearborn  Massacre 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

Avenue  and  Eighteenth  Street.  A  com- 
memorative tablet,  too,  of  the  little  stock- 
aded army  post  is  embedded  in  the  walls 
of  the  saloon  at  the  southern  end  of  the 
Rush  Street  Bridge,  which  with  historical 
irony  bears  the  name  of"  Fort  Dearborn." 
Although  the  most  blood-curdling 
event  in  all  our  history,  the  "Massacre" 
was  of  slight  moment,  since  the  fort  at  the 
river's  mouth  was  rebuilt,  and  garrisoned 
from  time  to  time,  until  another  Captain 
Whistler  marched  its  last  force  of  regulars 
away,  just  twenty  years  after  the  battle  of 
the  Sand  Dunes.  The  Indians  had  risen 
again,  meanwhile,and  under  the  surly  chief 
named  Blackhawk  had  caused  such  a  com- 
motion throughout  the  land  that  valiant 
old  "  Fuss  and  Feathers"  himself  brought 
both  an  army  and  an  epidemic  of  cholera 
to  our  little  fort.  It  was  then  that  lanky 
Abe  Lincoln,  a  country  lawyer,  shouldered 
a  musket  with  the  militia  of  his  town. 

15 


Chicago 

During  those  stirring  years  the  pack- 
trains  which  bore  furs  and  peltries  to  John 
Kinzie's  trading-post  were  crowded  off 
the  trails  by  the  canvas-covered  wagons  of 
sturdy  New  Englanders  trekking  to  our 
prairie  land;  and  the  Mackinaw  barges 
of  the  voyageiirs  were  replaced  upon  the 
blue  waters  of  Lake  Michigan  by  the  white- 
sailed  schooners  of  enterprising  merchants. 
When  Blackhawk  laid  down  his  blood- 
stained arms,  and  all  the  Indians  of  the 
prairies  gathered  at  our  river's  mouth  to 
sell  their  fertile  hunting-grounds  to  the 
White  Father  at  Washington,  a  few  score 
of  log  houses  and  clapboarded  stores  and 
saloons  had  been  built  upon  its  banks. 

On  Wolt  Point,  the  headland  where  the 
Guarie  joined  the  River  of  the  Portage, 
stood  Elijah  Wentworth's  tavern ;  across 
the  stream,  and  near  the  place  where 
Mark  Beaubien  had  begun  to  build  his 
more  ambitious  Sauganash  Hotel,  was  this 

i6 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

innkeeper's  Eagle  Exchange,  first  of  the 
famous  hostelries  within  the  "Loop."  A 
post-office,  too,  had  been  opened  in  a  log 
hut  a  few  yards  away,  and  our  "  mush- 
room village,"  as  a  traveler  called  it,  was 
preparing  to  incorporate  itself  as  a  full- 
fledged  town. 

No  sooner  had  our  charter  been  granted 
by  the  newly  created  State  of  Illinois  than 
Gurdon  S.  Hubbard,  who  died  only  thirty 
years  ago,  built  our  first  brick  building. 
When,  with  some  four  thousand  inhabit- 
ants, we  became  a  city  four  years  later  and 
began  to  dig  the  canal  which  made  us 
prosperous,  this  notable  citizen  built  our 
first  warehouse  and  started  our  first  line 
of  steamers.  Meanwhile,  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment dredged  away  the  sandbar  at  the 
river's  mouth,  and  built  restraining  piers. 
Then  the  first  boat  passed  through  the 
locks  of  the  new  canal. 

Presto,  a  marvelous  change  was  wrought 

17 


Chicago 

in  our  placid  river!  No  longer  did  the  offi- 
cers of  Fort  Dearborn  hunt  wolves  upon 
its  wooded  shores,  or  fiery  young  Indians 
fight  deadly  duels  there  for  love  of  a  Chip- 
pewa maiden.  With  bewildering  speed  the 
piles  of  its  many  miles  of  wharfage  were 
driven  into  its  miry  bottom;  while  ware- 
houses for  the  storage  of  merchandise  and 
elevators  for  the  unloading  and  loading  of 
cargoes  of  grain  arose  beside  it.  In  spa- 
cious yards  along  its  low  shores  yellow  tim- 
ber from  the  forests  of  the  north  was  stored 
in  symmetrical  piles,  until  the  drayman 
could  haul  it  to  the  prairie  and  the  car- 
penter saw  and  hammer  it  into  houses  with 
peaked  roofs,  or  mansions  with  filigreed 
cupolas. 

Wherever  the  traffic  of  the  city  growing 
so  magically  upon  its  banks  had  burst  its 
bounds,  the  river  was  spanned  by  a  red 
wooden  turn-bridge.  Up  their  steep  ap- 
proaches jaded  horses  staggered  the  whole 

i8 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

day  long,  while  the  busybody  tugboats, 
churning  the  waters  beneath  them  into 
slimy  foam,  puffed  asphyxiating  smoke 
into  the  nostrils  of  perspiring  citizens;  for 
those  were  the  piping  days  when  more 
vessels  were  cleared  from  our  river  than 
from  any  harbor  in  the  land.  To  stand  on 
the  Rush  Street  Bridge  at  nightfall  was 
then  a  joy  indeed  to  the  lover  of  ships. 

A  bell  clangs,  a  red  ball  rises  on  a  lit- 
tle pole,  and  slowly  the  bridge  swings  into 
the  stream,  its  brawny  tender  bending  his 
weight  to  the  lever.  Straining  at  the  haw- 
ser of  her  snorting  tug,  a  graceful  schooner 
glides  toward  the  ruffled  lake,  her  sailors 
singing  a  merry  "Ye  Ho"  to  the  rhyth- 
mical creaking  of  her  halliards  in  their 
blocks.  Slowly  her  sails  climb  her  sleek 
masts.  "Cast  off!  "  shouts  the  skipper  at 
her  wheel.  The  jibs  speed  up  the  iron 
headstays  and  fill  to  the  evening  breeze ; 
the  tugboat  whistles  in  token  of  farewell ; 

19 


Chicago 

another  vessel  has  been  added  to  the  grain 
fleet  whose  sails  dot  the  blue  horizon  as 
far  as  the  eye  can  see. 

Those  days  of  the  river's  glory  are  ended, 
for  now  the  huge  steamers  of  heartless  rail- 
way corporations  crawl  past  our  bascule 
bridges  at  night,  with  their  siren  whistles 
shrilling  above  the  nerve-wracking  clatter 
of  automobile  horns  and  trolley  gongs. 
Occasionally,  however,  a  weather-beaten 
"  lumber  hooker,"  loaded  to  her  guards 
with  sweet-smelHng  pine,  steals  into  the 
river  at  dusk.  The  waves  have  battered 
most  of  her  paint  away,  and  her  sooty  old 
sails  are  patched  in  many  places ;  yet  to 
me  she  is  a  thing  of  beauty,  and  as  she 
is  towed  past  the  bridge  where  I  stand,  I 
doff  my  hat  to  her  in  memory  of  the  trim 
barkentines  and  schooners  of  my  youth. 
They  lie,  alas,  in  Davy  Jones's  locker  or 
are  rotting  at  some  remote  wharf,  where 
the  small  boys  of  the  neighborhood  know 

20 


I^he  Canon  of  ^incy  Street  from  Fifth  Avenue 


The  River  of  the  Portage 

too  little  of  Marryat  and  Cooper  to  play 
my  boyhood  games  of  pirate  and  man-o'- 
war's-man  upon  their  warped  and  pitch- 
less  decks. 

Though  a  forest  of  slender  masts  no 
longer  rises  from  our  river,  and  the  wooden 
warehouses  and  elevators  upon  its  banks 
have  been  replaced  by  huge  structures  of 
steel  and  brick,  it  is  still  beautiful.  Yes,  I 
repeat  the  word  boldly,  for  I  met  Gari 
Melchiors  and  Walter  McEwen  on  the 
Rush  Street  Bridge  one  day,  gazing  at  the 
white  steamers  and  the  grimy  buildings 
veiled  in  the  evening  mist.  "The  most 
beautiful  thing  in  all  Chicago  is  the  river," 
exclaimed  one  of  these  painters.  "  Alas," 
sighed  the  other,  "  only  Whistler  could  do 
it  justice." 

To  an  art-loving  citizen  of  our  city 
Whistler  himself  once  said:  "Chicago, 
dear  me,  what  a  wonderful  place  !  I  really 
ought  to  visit  it  some  day,  for  you  know 

21 


Chicago 

my  grandfather  founded  it  and  my  uncle 
was  the  last  commander  of  Fort  Dear- 
born ! "  Had  he  deigned  to  visit  the  site 
of  the  frontier  post  his  grandfather  built 
scarcely  more  than  a  century  ago,  he  would 
have  found  a  city  as  smoke-ridden  as  Lon- 
don, and  a  gray  river  as  suited  to  his  genius 
as  the  Thames. 


A  Bit  of  Old  Wabash  Avenue 


II.    The  Heart  of  the  City 


II 

THE  HEART  OF  THE  CITY 

THE  river's  two  branches,  and  the 
reach  through  which,  united,  they 
flow  to  the  lake,  divide  Chicago,  like  the 
proverbial  Gaul,  into  three  parts,  called 
prosaically  the  North  Side,  the  South  Side, 
and  the  West  Side.  Ethnologically  as  dif- 
ferent as  are  New  Yorkers,  Brooklynites, 
and  Harlemites,  the  inhabitants  of  these 
three  territorial  divisions  view  each  other 
askance  and  mingle  but  little.  There  is  a 
neutral  land,  however,  where  they  transact 
business  by  day  and  enjoy  themselves  by 
night,  and  because  the  trains  of  the  ele- 
vated railways  run  around  it,  instead  of 
into  it  and  out  again,  as  they  do  into  the 
Wall  Street  district  of  New  York,  it  is 
called  the  "Loop." 

Here  a  quarter  of  a  million  people  of 

25 


Chicago 

both  sexes  are  dumped  six  days  a  week  by 
the  transportation  lines  to  toil  for  their 
daily  bread.  When  the  office  buildings  and 
stores  vomit  them  into  the  streets  at  night- 
fall, they  hang  to  straps  in  surface,steam,  or 
elevated  cars,  until  they  reach  the  houses 
and  flats  they  designate  as  home  ;  but  no 
sooner  is  the  soot  washed  from  their  faces 
than  a  goodly  proportion  ot  them  hasten 
back  to  the  Loop  again,  for  here  are  the 
clubs,  theatres,  restaurants,  and  hotels,  as 
well  as  the  banks,  offices,  and  department 
stores.  Indeed,  when  the  street  lamps  and 
protean  signs  begin  to  glisten,  the  aspect 
of  the  Loop  alters  entirely.  Restless  men 
and  neurotic  women  no  longer  scamper 
from  sky-scraper  to  sky-scraper;  in  their 
places  are  affable  strollers  who  tarry  now 
and  then  to  gaze  at  the  modish  manikins 
displayed  in  the  gay  shop  windows.  The 
street  cars  still  deposit  people  in  the  Loop, 
but  they   are  merry-makers,    not   toilers, 

26 


From  the  Viaduct  —  The  Loop  Station  at  West  Randolph  Street 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

and  some  of  them  actually  find  time  to 
smile.  The  horse  truck,  moreover,  and  the 
motor  van  have  disappeared,  and  only  the 
limousine  and  taxicab  remain  to  menace 
life. 

A  cauldron  of  human  endeavor  by  day, 
a  pleasure  spot  by  night,  the  Loop  is  lit- 
erally, as  well  as  metaphorically,  the  heart 
of  the  city.  Technically  speaking  it  is  the 
part  of  our  so-called  "  Business  District" 
encircled  by  the  ugly  posts  and  girders  of 
the  elevated  railways.  In  reality,  however, 
it  extends  to  the  lake  and  river,  and  as  far 
south  as  the  Blackstone  Hotel;  for  within 
this  area  of  less  than  a  square  mile  is  found 
everything  material  or  aesthetic  which  the 
inhabitants  of  our  three  "sides"  enjoy  in 
common. 

Less  than  fifty  years  ago  this  Loop  was 
a  waste  of  smouldering  ruins;  yet  the 
builder  of  the  sky-scraper  has  been  almost 
as  ruthless  a  destroyer  as  the  Great  Fire 

27 


Chicago 

itself,  so  different  in  aspect  is  the  business 
district  of  to-day  from  that  which  arosefrom 
the  ashes  of  i  87  i.  Should  some  Rip  Van 
Winkle  of  Chicago  awake  from  a  sleep  of 
twenty  years  to  wander  in  bewilderment 
through  its  canyon-like  streets,  he  would 
hardly  find  an  unaltered  landmark,  even 
the  familiar  Board  of  Trade  being  shorn 
of  its  tower.  Now  and  then,  however, 
he  would  stumble  upon  a  familiar  object 
sadly  changed  in  appearance, —  McVick- 
er's  Theatre,  for  instance,  sunk  from  its 
legitimate  estate  to  ten-cent  vaudeville, 
and  the  once  proud  Palmer  House,  now  a 
drummers'  haunt.  The  old  Chicago  Club 
building,  too,  is  reduced  in  quality  to  a 
flashy  restaurant;  the  Tremont  House  is 
a  college  annex,  and  the  Grand  Pacific, 
though  still  a  hostelry,  is  considerably 
curtailed,  both  in  size  and  social  stand- 
ing. Yet  these,  and  a  few  grimy  old 
six-storied  structures  with  mansard  roofs 

28 


"Tbe  Board  of  Trade  Building  from  LaSalle  Street 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

crouching  indigently,  here  and  there, 
between  brand-new  office  buildings  of 
twenty-story  haughtiness,  are  all  that  is 
left  in  the  Loop  of  the  ante-World's  Fair 
city,  —  unless  it  be  a  familiar  name  or 
two,  such  as  "Buck  and  Raynor,"  or  "The 
Tribune,"  appearing  on  some  corner  as 
of  yore,  but  upon  a  building  wholly 
strange.  Barely  a  step  outside  the  Loop, 
however,  is  dingy  old  South  Water  Street 
unaltered  in  aspect,  and  still  made  im- 
passable for  man  and  beast  by  the  boxes 
and  barrels  heaped  upon  its  sidewalks, 
and  the  rows  of  hucksters'  carts  backed 
up  before  its  grimy  doors. 

If  this  Rip  Van  Winkle  were  a  man  of 
taste,  he  would  marvel,  I  fear,  at  the  lack  of 
it  shown  by  the  builders  of  new  Chicago. 
The  magnitude  of  its  fire-proof  structures 
might,  it  is  true,  fill  his  heart  with  ad- 
miration for  the  indomitable  power  that 
they  symbol;    yet  seldom  would  it  thrill 

29 


Chicago 

to  architectural  beauty,  and  then  only 
because  an  occasional  architect  had  dis- 
covered that  a  sky-scraper  need  not  of 
necessity  be  either  entirely  shoddy  or  en- 
tirely ugly.  There  is,  for  example,  an  aca- 
demic appropriateness  in  the  utilitarian 
Gothic  of  the  new  University  Club,  and 
a  feeling  of  architectural  correctness  in 
the  graceful  Renaissance  bank  building  at 
the  northeast  corner  of  Monroe  and  Clark 
Streets;  for  here,  at  least,  there  is  pleasing 
imposture,  its  base  giving  the  appearance 
of  sufficient  strength  to  bear  its  weight. 

Occasionally,  too,  a  note  of  original- 
ity is  sounded,  as  in  the  case  of  the  City 
Club;  but,  generally  speaking,  the  Loop  is 
barren  of  architectural  charm.  Its  gran- 
deur is  inspiring,  I  confess,  like  that  ot 
lower  New  York;  but  a  lover  of  the  beau- 
tiful will  search  it  almost  in  vain,  as  he  will 
the  business  district  of  any  American  city, 
for  that  which  delights,  rather  than  thrills, 

30 


The  Market  in  South  Water  Street 


^^-^-n. 


'^^ 


>^.. 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

the  eye.  Blame  not  the  architects  whose 
task  is  to  get  the  most  rent  per  cubic  foot 
with  the  least  possible  outlay,  but  rather 
the  avaricious  owners  of  real  estate,  and 
the  supine  aldermen  whose  baneful  or- 
dinances have  permitted  our  cities  to  be 
distorted  out  of  all  architectural  propor- 
tion. Chicago,  however,  was  the  first  of- 
fender, the  sky-scraper  being  its  offspring. 
Alas,  if  only  some  Baron  Haussmann  had 
had  the  power  to  stifle  it  at  the  moment 
of  its  birth,  American  cities  might  to-day 
be  beautiful. 

Yet  in  no  other  way,  it  seems  to  me,  are 
the  ideals  and  characteristics  of  a  people 
at  the  different  periods  of  its  existence  so 
definitely  expressed  as  by  its  architecture, 
—  particularly  that  which  is  ecclesiastical 
or  governmental ;  and  nowhere,  1  believe, 
is  the  truth  of  this  so  clearly  demonstrated 
as  by  the  different  court-houses  and  city 
halls  which  have  stood  from  time  to  time 

31 


Chicago 

within  the  part  of  the  Loop  which  in  the 
city's  infancy  was  known  as  the  PubHc 
Square. 

Some  eighty-five  years  ago  two  dozen 
town  lots  were  given  by  the  State  of 
Illinois  to  the  County  of  Cook  for  pub- 
lic purposes;  and  with  characteristic  civic 
improvidence  sixteen  of  these  were  sold 
almost  immediately  to  pay  the  current 
county  expenses.  The  remaining  eight, 
however,  have  remained  a  public  domain, 
and  to-day  their  entire  area  is  covered  by 
the  huge  structure  which  houses  the  local 
authorities  with  considerable  regard  for 
their  comfort,  but  with  little  for  the  feel- 
ings of  that  small  coterie  of  citizens  whose 
artistic  souls  are  shocked  by  its  incon- 
gruous design.  I  hold,  however,  that  these 
aesthetic  Chicagoans  are  wrong  in  de- 
nouncing the  pseudo-Roman  architecture 
of  our  county  and  city  building.  Let  them 
turn  to  the   pages  of  Ferrero   and  learn 

32 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

how  like  unto  our  American  civilization 
was  that  of  ancient  Rome,  particularly  in 
matters  of  civic  polity.  Though  the  huge 
Corinthian  columns  which  surround  our 
municipal  sky-scraper  are  but  hollow 
shams  upholding  nothing  but  themselves, 
are  they  not  the  chief  architectural  note 
of  a  building  designed  to  house  both  a 
Board  of  County  Commissioners  and  a 
Board  of  Aldermen  ?  The  majestic  pro- 
portions of  this  up-to-date  Hotel  de  Ville 
typify  Chicago's  civic  strength  and  cour- 
age, and  its  pseudo-Roman  lines  the  po- 
litical corruption  she  shares  with  her  sister 
cities  of  the  East.  Surely,  an  architecture 
which  symbolizes  both  the  good  and  the 
evil  of  a  city  is  appropriate  to  its  chief 
municipal  structure! 

A  decade  or  so  ago  a  county  and  city 
building  embellished  by  marble  columns 
and  ornate  cornices  stood  in  the  Public 
Square.   It  rested,  however,  on  crumbling 

33 


Chicago 

foundations  and  typified,  it  seems  to  me, 
the  parvenu  life  that  we  led  between  the 
panics  of '73  and  '93.  This  was  our  "get- 
rich-quick"  period,  and  during  it  new- 
comers from  the  four  corners  of  the  earth 
made  fortunes  in  a  jiffy  and  built  them- 
selves flamboyant  mansions  of  glazed  brick 
or  variegated  stone  amongst  the  dignified 
Victorian  houses  of  the  old  citizens  whose 
fortunes  had  survived  the  Fire.  Though 
conceit  for  our  city's  magic  growth  burned 
in  the  breast  of  every  man-jack  of  us  then, 
and  our  architectural  manifestations  were 
generally  as  shoddy  as  our  pretensions, 
this  purse-proud  period  of  our  existence 
begat,  nevertheless,  our  spirit  of  "I  Will," 
and  it  culminated  in  that  unforgettable 
triumph  of  architectural  beauty  —  our 
World's  Fair. 

But  our  true  character  was  engendered 
by  the  sturdy  New  Englanders  who  settled 
in   the  city  after  the  opening  of  the  Illi- 

34 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

nois  and  Michigan  Canal;  and  during  the 
fifties  and  sixties,  when  the  tallest  objects 
in  our  midst  were  the  spires  of  our  many 
churches,  a  building  appropriate  to  the 
austerity  of  our  Puritanical  days  stood  in 
the  Public  Square  surrounded  by  grass 
plats,  fountains,  and  flag  walks,  — the  som- 
ber stone  Court-House  we  old  Chicago- 
ans  remember,  in  which  Lincoln's  body 
lay  in  state  when  on  its  way  to  final  rest  in 
Springfield.  Until  its  alarm  bell  pealed  its 
own  death  knell  upon  a  night  of  holo- 
caust, its  cupola  dominated  a  business  dis- 
trict in  which  the  six-storied  Sherman 
House  of  imposing  marble  front  held  its 
head  proudly  above  its  four-and  five-stor- 
ied brick  contemporaries. 

The  street  grades  of  this  period  were 
raised  three  times  within  seventeen  years ; 
but  until  the  advent  of  "  Nicholson  pave- 
ment" the  sign,  "No  Bottom  Here,"  was 
habitually  displayed  wherever  a  dray  had 

35 


Chicago 

been  dug  out  of  the  mud.  One  day,  so  the 
story  goes,  the  familiar  head  and  hat  of 
General  Hart  L.  Stewart  showed  above  the 
surface  of  Lake  Street.  "You  seem  to  be 
in  pretty  deep.  General,"  shouted  a  friend. 
"Great  Scott!"  exclaimed  the  wayfarer, 
"I  've  got  a  horse  under  me."  But  that 
happened  before  the  principal  streets  were 
"planked  "  by  order  of  the  Common  Coun- 
cil, and  in  those  days  a  one-storied  Court- 
House  adorned  by  a  Greek  portico  stood 
in  the  Public  Square.  On  its  steps  a  fugi- 
tive slave  was  once  sold  at  public  auction 
by  the  sheriff,  but  was  freed  forthwith  by 
his  purchaser,  Chicago  being  long  a  cen- 
tral station  of  "the  underground  railway." 
Our  business  district  was  then  composed 
of  wooden  shanties,  a  few  of  which  made 
tinder  for  the  flames  of '71.  Until  the 
late  sixties,  moreover,  when  the  Board  of 
Trade  forsook  its  dingy  quarters  in  South 
Water  Street  and  our  principal  dry-goods 

36 


Michigan  Avenue  from  Grant  Park 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

emporium  moved  from  Lake  Street  to  the 
familiar  corner  it  still  occupies,  all  of  the 
present-day  Loop  south  of  the  Court- 
House  and  east  of  State  Street  was  a 
residential  district  in  which  the  "  marble 
fronts"  of  the  newly  rich  adorned  both 
Michigan  and  Wabash  Avenues  as  far  north 
as  Washington  Street.  Even  while  our  reg- 
iments were  battling  at  Shiloh  and  Vicks- 
burg,  the  lot  at  the  south  side  of  the  Court- 
House  was  still  vacant,  and  its  surface  so 
far  below  the  street  level  that  when  in  '63 
a  circus  spread  its  tents  there,  its  patrons 
were  obliged  to  descend  to  their  seats,  as 
into  a  cellar. 

In  those  days  the  pedestrians  in  the 
business  district  lost  their  breath  so  fre- 
quently in  following  the  ups  and  downs  of 
the  street  grades  that  the  raising  of  them 
became  a  serious  problem,  until  George 
M.  Pullman,  a  young  contractor  from  the 
East,  solved  it  by  jacking  up  the  Tremont 

37 


Chicago 

House  a  whole  story  without  disturbing 
the  comfort  of  its  guests.  Meanwhile, 
Uranus  H.  Crosby,  our  first  "uplifter,"  lost 
a  fortune  in  providing  us  with  a  "  surpass- 
ing art  temple,"  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
opera  house  and  picture  gallery  in  Wash- 
ington Street  which  bore  his  name  being 
not  unlike  those  of  the  Hotel  Richelieu, 
where,  over  a  score  of  years  ago,  the  late 
"Cardinal"  Bemis  tried  in  vain  to  cosmo- 
politanize  us  before  our  time. 

In  the  city  of  to-day  the  twenty-storied 
hotel  at  the  northwest  corner  of  Ran- 
dolph and  Clark  Streets  seems  the  most 
substantial  link  with  our  business  district 
before  the  Fire,  though  its  festive  character 
in  nowise  pictures  to  the  old  Chicagoan 
the  staid  Sherman  House  of  his  youth.  As 
many  hotels  called  by  this  name  have  been 
erected  on  this  corner  as  there  have  been 
court-houses  in  the  square  opposite,  the 
first  of  them  being  known  as  the  "City 

38 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

Hotel"  until  the  Honorable  Francis  C. 
Sherman,  our  fifth  mayor,  bought  it  and 
attached  his  name  to  the  site,  apparently 
in  perpetuity. 

At  the  time  Chicago  was  incorporated  as 
a  municipality,  the  City  Hotel  opened  its 
doors;  meanwhile  its  predecessor  in  pub- 
lic hospitality,  the  Sauganash  Hotel,  was 
being  converted  into  our  first  playhouse. 
This  historic  hostelry  stood  at  the  south- 
east corner  of  Lake  and  Market  Streets,  a 
site  upon  which  at  a  later  day  the  famous 
"Wigwam"  was  built.  Here  Abraham  Lin- 
coln was  nominated  for  the  Presidency; 
and  during  the  momentous  convention  of 
I  860  his  political  headquarters  were  at  the 
Tremont  House,  an  hotel  vying  in  impor- 
tance with  the  Sherman  House.  Indeed,  of 
all  the  buildings  in  the  Loop,  the  hotels 
alone  are  rich  in  historic  memory,  the 
names  Briggs,  Revere,  and  Clifton  still 
remaining,  like  that  of  Sherman,  to  recall 

39 


Chicago 

the  days  when  the  treasonable  murmurings 
of  our  Copperheads  were  so  completely 
stifled  by  the  Lumbards' stirring  singing  of 
the  songs  of  George  F.  Root,  that  our  full 
quota  of  troops  was  dispatched  to  the 
front. 

Although  the  Palmer  House  and  the 
Grand  Pacific  were  barely  under  roof 
when  the  Great  Fire  swept  them  away,  the 
hotels  which  now  bear  these  names  are 
among  the  oldest  buildings  in  the  Loop, 
typifying  to  my  generation  the  after-the- 
Fire  period,  when  we  were  bending  our  en- 
ergies to  the  re-creation  of  our  city.  Our 
homes  were  then  in  tree-lined  avenues — 
Dearborn,  LaSalle,  Michigan,  Prairie,  and 
Calumet  —  and  one  or  the  other  of  these 
"palatial  hotels,"  as  we  were  wont  to  call 
them,  was  the  Mecca  of  our  social  pilgrim- 
ages "downtown."  Will  any  old  Chica- 
goan  ever  forget  the  annual  game  dinner 
at  the  Grand  Pacific,  when  in  best  bib  and 

40 


LaSalle  Street  at  the  Stock  Exchange 


b  \ '  •     < 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

tucker  we  partook  of  such  obsolete  viands 
as  antelope  steak  and  roast  buffalo  brought 
to  us  by  grinning  darkies,  each  balancing 
upon  an  upturned  palm  a  tray  filled  with 
dishes  shaped  like  canary  birds'  bathtubs? 
The  Palmer  House,  the  Grand  Pacific, 
and  also  the  new  Tremont  House  were 
then  our  pride,  and  their  bonifaces  among 
our  most  esteemed  citizens;  for  who  did 
not  cherish  a  nod  of  recognition  from 
Potter  Palmer,  John  B.  Drake,  or  John  A. 
Rice?  Their  marble-floored  lobbies  were 
our  accustomed  haunts,  —  except  at  con- 
vention time,  when  the  slouch-hatted 
henchmen  of  Grant,  Blaine,  Logan,  or 
Garfield  usurped  our  easy  chairs  and  sul- 
lied our  favorite  corners  with  their  tobacco 
juice.  The  sky-scraping  hotels  of  to-day 
with  their  maitres  d'  hotel,  gar  cons  de  res- 
taurmit,  and  cuisines  francaises,  are  not  of 
our  Chicago  soil  as  were  those  hostelries 
of  the  after-the-Fire  period;  nor  do  they 

41 


Chicago 

play  so  notable  a  part  in  the  life  of  the 
city. 

Indeed,  the  Palmer  House  and  the 
Grand  Pacific  during  their  "  American 
plan"  glory  differed  as  greatly  from  the 
hotels  of  to-day  as  the  tumultuous  Loop 
differs  from  our  provincial  business  dis- 
trict during  the  years  when  spavined  horses 
with  tinkling  bells  upon  their  collars 
dragged  "bob-tailed"  streetcars  through 
State  Street,  and  the  lusty  children  of  our 
prominent  citizens  cut  capers  around  the 
iron  lions  in  front  of  Gossage's  store  while 
their  mothers  shopped  within.  Instead  of 
the  sedate  family  "rockaways"  of  that  un- 
pretentious age,  with  fly-nets  upon  the 
backs  of  their  long-tailed  horses,  and  sleepy 
"hired  men,"  as  we  called  our  coach- 
men then,  dozing  beneath  their  projecting 
roofs,  luxurious  limousines  now  stand  in 
State  Street,  with  French  governesses  in 
their  cushioned  interiors  to   prevent  the 

42 


Michigan  Boulevard  South  from  ^th  Street 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

pampered  children  of  to-day  from  frolick- 
ing with  hoi polloi  while  their  mothers  shop 
at  "Field's." 

Until  the  time  of  the  Great  Fire  our 
lawns  were  shaded  by  the  cotton-wood 
trees  of  Michigan  Avenue  and  the  waters 
of  the  lake  flowed  to  its  curb.  Grant  Park, 
with  its  museums,  fountains,  statues,  grass 
plats,  and  bare  stretches  of  newly  made  land, 
now  lies  where  we  old  Chicagoans  learned 
to  sail  and  swim.  Noble  Michigan  Ave- 
nue, moreover,  has  become  a  cosmopoli- 
tan street  emulating  in  the  smartness  of  its 
shops  the  Rue  de  la  Paix  and  Fifth  Ave- 
nue ;  but  our  metropolitan  bigness  lacks, 
it  seems  to  me,  the  charm  of  our  small- 
town days.  Although  we  are  less  provincial 
now,  we  are  also  less  American  than  we  were 
before  our  New  England  ideals  were  atten- 
uated by  so  potent  an  admixture  of  alien- 
ism that  Anglo-Saxon  lineaments  have  be- 
come a  rarity  in  the  faces  of  our  people. 

43 


Chicago 

Time  was  when  I  knew  a  goodly  pro- 
portion of  the  passers-by  in  the  downtown 
streets  —  men,  like  myself,  of  New  Eng- 
land blood,  whose  fathers  felled  our  forests 
and  tilled  our  prairie  land.  Now,  as  I 
stroll  through  the  heart  of  the  city  at  the 
hour  when  the  great  office  buildings  and 
department  stores  are  emptying  them- 
selves, I  search  the  scurrying  crowds  in 
vain  for  a  familiar  face;  and  as  I  am  borne 
on  by  the  human  torrent  gushing  from  the 
crag-like  walls  about  me,  I  feel  that,  like 
my  Puritanical  traditions,  I  belong  to  an- 
other age.  While  insurgent  fellow  citizens 
dodge  recklessly  beween  the  wheels  of 
passing  motor  cars  in  order  to  save  a  few 
seconds  of  time,  my  ingenuous  respect  for 
the  law  of  the  land  halts  my  steps  when- 
ever a  crossing  policeman  raises  his  white- 
gloved  hand.  Bewildered  by  the  hurly- 
burly  of  my  native  city,  I — a  lonely  figure 
of  a   pristine  day — try  then  to  compre- 

44 


The  Heart  of  the  City 

hend  the  multifarious  changes  a  few  short 
years  have  wrought  in  its  life  and  char- 
acter, try  to  realize  that  within  my  own 
lifetime  more  than  two  million  people 
have  been  added  to  its  population. 


In  Old  Washington  Street 


III.    The  Great  JVest  Side 


Ill 

THE  GREAT  WEST  SIDE 

ONE  must  be  truly  an  old  Chicagoan 
to  recall  the  time  when  the  shady 
streets  which  lie  west  of  the  river  vied  in 
social  standing  with  any  in  the  city.  Here 
factories  now  belch  their  smoke  upon  the 
mansard  roofs  of  dilapidated  tenements 
that  once  were  the  mansions  of  wealthy 
citizens  whose  scions  blush  for  their  origin, 
the  "  Great  West  Side,"  as  it  is  called  de- 
risively, being  now  a  proletarian  domain 
remote  from  the  ken  of  fashionable  so- 
ciety. 

In  all  Chicago,  however,  there  are  no 
streets  so  reminiscent  of  our  strait-laced 
past  as  are  those  of  the  disdained  West 
Side.  Here  block  after  block  of  "marble- 
fronts"  and  red-brick  mansions  stand  un- 
altered, except  by   the   ravages   of  time. 

49 


Chicago 

Their  lawns  are  unkept,  their  iron  balus- 
trades are  rusty;  yet  like  decayed  aristo- 
crats who  have  known  better  days,  these 
grimy  old  houses  of  an  austere  past  evince 
a  courtliness  and  dignity  quite  lacking  in 
the  Lake  Shore  palaces  of  modern  mil- 
lionaires. Moreover,  like  the  families  that 
once  inhabited  them,  they  antedate  the 
Great  Fire,  —  a  sine  qua  non  of  Chicago 
patricianship. 

Though  the  cabin  erected  by  Jean 
Baptiste  Point  de  Saible,  a  San  Domingan 
negro,  gives  an  apparent  priority  in  age 
to  the  North  Side,  the  West  Side  may  at 
least  challenge  its  rival  in  the  matter  of 
antiquity.  In  1683  the  Chevalier  de  la 
Salle  was  housed  in  a  log  fort  somewhere 
upon  our  river's  banks,  while  a  treaty 
made  with  the  Indians  somewhat  over  a 
century  later  by  General  Anthony  Wayne, 
speaks  of  "Chikago"  as  a  place  where 
there  was  a  fort.   Tradition,  as  recorded 

50 


'The  Old  '^Marble-Fronts  "  of  Washington  Street 


■>'^. 


Wkl 


^--^}^ 


The  Great  West  Side 

by  so  credible  an  early  settler  as  Gurdon 
S.  Hubbard,  holds  that  this  fort  stood  on 
the  western  shore  of  the  river  not  far  from 
Wolf  Point,  and  that  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  it  was  occupied  as  a 
trading-post  by  Guarie,  the  Frenchman 
by  whose  name  the  river's  northern  branch 
was  once  called. 

In  view  of  this,  may  not  those  Chicago- 
ans  who,  like  myself,  were  born  upon  the 
Great  West  Side,  look  with  pride  upon 
their  birthplace  as  once  a  domain  of  New 
France,  while  leaving  the  North-Sider  to 
blush  for  the  dusky  parvenu  who  first  in- 
habited his  land?  Should  a  claim  based 
solely  upon  historical  tradition  be  scouted 
by  our  rivals,  we  of  the  West  Side  may 
retort  that  our  modest  bailiwick  was  be- 
yond peradventure  settled  by  Caucasians; 
since  upon  the  West  Side  was  situated  the 
indubitable  farm  called  "  Hardscrabble," 
where,  over  four  months  before  Chicago's 

51 


Chicago 

boasted  "  Massacre,"  two  white  men  were 
killed  by  the  Indians.  Any  aristocratic  pre- 
tensions the  South  Side  may  hold  shall  be 
dismissed  forthwith  by  the  declaration  of 
our  notable  pioneer  citizen,  "  Long  John" 
Wentworth,  that  even  as  late  as  1830  "the 
South  Side  had  no  status." 

The  truth  is,  however,  that  Chicago 
grew  up  around  Fort  Dearborn,  such  busi- 
ness as  there  was  in  the  early  days  being 
transacted  in  its  neighborhood.  The  in- 
habitants then  dwelt  across  the  river,  either 
on  the  North  Side  or  on  the  West  Side; 
but  after  the  fort  was  abandoned  a  resi- 
dential district  sprang  up  on  the  South 
Side  which  soon  vied  in  popularity  with 
its  rivals.  After  the  Fire,  when  the  inroads 
of  business  began  to  drive  residences  far- 
ther and  farther  away  from  the  river,  the 
West-Sider  found  it  increasingly  difficult 
to  maintain  social  relations  with  his  friends 
in  the  other  divisions  of  a  rapidly  growing 

52 


The  Great  West  Side 

city.  Selling  his  house  for  a  song,  he  moved, 
sometimes  to  the  North  Side,  but  more 
usually  to  the  South  Side,  where  he  re- 
mained until  the  southward  march  of  busi- 
ness drove  both  him  and  the  native  South- 
Sider  to  the  uncommercialized  portion  of 
the  Lake  Shore,  lying  north  of  the  business 
district.  Thus  the  North  Side  has  become 
the  exclusive  abode  of  our  "first  families," 
only  a  few  of  which,  however,  are  indige- 
nous to  its  soil. 

With  the  rebuilding  of  the  city  after 
the  Great  Fire,  the  glory  of  the  West 
Side  waned,  and  with  the  passing  of  the 
World's  Fair,  that  of  the  South  Side  as 
well.  Time  was,  however,  when  the  three 
sides  were  of  social  parity;  though  I  recall 
the  fact  that  when  the  Episcopal  Cathedral 
of  Saints  Peter  and  Paul  was  erected  in 
the  quiet  street  where  I  lived,  and  a  bishop 
of  Anglican  mien  and  cosmopolite  man- 
ner came  to  dwell  among  us,  we  of  West 


Chicago 

Washington  Street  felt  ourselves  to  be  so- 
cially a  little  superior  to  our  friends  in  the 
other  divisions.  This  was  half  a  century 
ago.  To-day  the  Cathedral  is  surrounded 
by  slums,  and  the  staid  old  mansions  of 
West  Washington  Street,  which  have  not 
been  demolished  to  make  room  for  ugly 
factories,  have  become  tenements  or  lodg- 
ing-houses. 

That  once  proud  street  now  bears  the 
pompous  name  of  "boulevard,"  but  ex- 
cept for  its  pavement,  which  the  authorities 
keep  in  good  repair,  it  presents  no  indi- 
cation of  its  bygone  quality.  Even  little 
Union  Park  through  which  its  passes  on 
its  way  to  our  circumambient  chain  of 
boulevards,  has  become  a  mere  breathing- 
space  where  the  unemployed  doze  in  the 
shade  of  its  bushes.  Yet  I  recall  it  as  a  vast 
region  of  lawns,  trees,  and  flower-beds, 
whither  I  went  of  an  afternoon  to  watch 
a  huge  grizzly  bear  pace  back  and  forth 

54 


The  Church  at  Union  Park 


t*v' 


The  Great  West  Side 

in  his  pit-like  cage,  or  merrily  to  race  with 
other  children  up  an  artificial  hill  which 
seemed  to  me  to  be  a  mountain  in  height, 
when  panting  I  reached  its  summit. 

Alas,  that  mountain  has  become  a 
mole-hill,  and  Union  Park's  blue  lake, 
on  the  waters  of  which  I  sailed  my  toy 
boats,  now  appears  but  little  larger  than 
a  goodly  sized  fountain.  But  at  the  corner 
where  Washington  Boulevard  enters  this 
playground  of  my  childhood,  there  is  a 
familiar  block  of  "marble-fronts,"  and  in 
that  street  where,  long  ago,  horse-chest- 
nuts used  to  bloom,  there  are  other  houses 
which  I  remember,  some  of  red  brick,  with 
here  and  there  a  weather-beaten  cupola 
upon  a  corniced  roof,  and  some  with  clap- 
board walls  and  shingle  roofs.  How  dif- 
ferent the  prim  town  they  recall  to  mind 
from  the  seething  world  city  of  to-day; 
for  when  the  West  Side  was  at  its  social 
zenith,  the    righteousness  of  New  Eng- 

55 


Chicago 

land  was  in  the  hearts  of  our  foremost 
citizens. 

The  Sabbath  began  on  Saturday  at  sun- 
down then,  we  children  being  held  in 
hushed  restraint  till  after  the  forbidding 
Sunday  evening  meal.  With  upper  lips 
clean-shaven,  and  sombre  broadcloth  coats 
hanging  loosely  upon  their  lanky  shoul- 
ders, our  fathers  walked  devoutly  to 
church,  our  hoopskirted  mothersin  bonnet 
and  shawl  treading  meekly  beside  them. 
Meanwhile,  "fast  young  men,"  as  they 
were  called,  speeded  trotting  horses  past 
the  church  doors,  much  to  the  scandal  of 
the  pious.  Like  the  "black-legs,"  as  pro- 
fessional gamblers  were  called,  and  their 
brazen  consorts,  these  Sabbath-breakers 
were  without  our  social  pale. 

When  Dexter  Park  was  in  the  heyday 
of  its  glory,  horse  fanciers,  both  young  and 
old,  drove  sulkies  and  buggies  through  the 
streets  of  the  South  Side.   With  the  open- 

56 


The  Great  West  Side 

ing  of  the  West  Side  Driving  Park,  out  on 
the  prairie  near  the  present  Garfield  Park, 
West  Washington  Street  became  their  fa- 
vorite haunt,  not  only  in  summer,  but  in 
winter  as  well,  when  wrapped  in  warm 
bufi'alo  robes  they  raced  their  cutters  over 
the  glistening  snows,  their  trotters  spurred 
to  valiant  bursts  of  speed  by  jingling  bells 
and  the  cheers  of  the  sport-loving  crowds 
thronging  the  icy  sidewalks. 

It  was  an  inspiring  sight,  though  it 
shocked  many  a  sanctimonious  West-Sider, 
by  whom  dancing  and  cards,  as  well  as 
horse-racing  and  play-going,  were  ta- 
booed. Our  more  tolerant  citizens,  how- 
ever, played  stakeless  whist  and  euchre, 
or  chasseed  to  the  strains  of  "Johnny" 
Hand's  fiddle  through  the  intricate  figures 
of  the  "Prairie  Queen,"  while  their  sons 
and  daughters  danced  the  schottische  and 
the  polka  redowa.  Whenever  Clara  Louise 
Kellogg  or  Christine   Nillson  sang,  they 

57 


Chicago 

filed  into  the  boxes  and  stalls  of  Cros- 
by's Opera  House,  while  their  strait-laced 
neighbors  attended  Wednesday  evening 
prayer  meeting. 

But  for  the  strict  and  the  liberal  alike 
a  rigid  simplicity  of  life  obtained,  a  do- 
mestic establishment  consisting,  during 
those  simple  days,  of  a  cook  and  a  "sec- 
ond girl"  for  the  housework,  and  a  "hired 
man  "  to  drive  the  "  span  "  of  family  horses 
and  do  the  "chores."  Dinner  was  served 
at  noon,  omx  patres  familiar ut?i  carving  at 
the  heads  of  their  tables,  after  duly  saying 
grace.  On  New  Year's  Day,  however,  when 
the  snow  in  the  streets  was  crunched  from 
morn  till  night  by  the  wheels  of  speeding 
carriages,  home  cooking  was  supplanted 
by  the  caterer's  art. 

Throughout  that  convivial  day,  and 
late  into  its  night  as  well,  men  in  "stove- 
pipes" and  "swallow-tails"  trooped  up 
and  down  our  doorsteps.    The  tired  host- 

58 


The  Great  West  Side 

esses  in  crinoline,  who  stood  in  their  gas- 
lighted  houses  shaking  white-gloved  hands 
the  whole  day  long,  were  to  be  pitied; 
yet  their  ordeal  was  less  wearisome  by  far 
than  that  endured  by  their  New  Year's 
callers,  for  adjoining  each  velvet-carpeted 
<' parlor"  was  a  refreshment  room.  To 
refuse  a  helping  of  chicken  salad,  scal- 
loped oysters,  or  ice-cream  and  cake, 
made  the  feminine  dispenser  of  these 
goodies  frown  and  pout  her  pretty  lips. 
Moreover,  the  Commonwealth  of  Ken- 
tucky is  contiguous  to  the  State  of  Illi- 
nois; hence  on  more  than  one  mahogany 
board  stood  a  bowl  of  egg-nog,  or  a  de- 
canter of  Madeira  that  had  journeyed 
around  the  Horn,  with  a  temptress  from 
the  blue-grass  land  beside  it.  Picture  a 
popular  bachelor's  state  of  mind  and  body 
after  he  had  made  an  hundred  calls ! 

But  only  on  that  day  of  days  did  our 
austerity  give   way    to   such    conviviality. 

59 


Chicago 

Throughout  the  remainder  of  the  year  we 
staid  West-Siders,  being  firmly  convinced 
of  our  social  and  moral  excellence,  led 
commendable  lives.  It  is  true  that  a  few 
upstarts  built  "elegant  homes,"  as  they 
called  them,  in  Ashland  Avenue,  and 
splurged  in  a  way  to  set  disapproving 
tongues  a-wagging.  But  in  West  Wash- 
ington Street  between  Halsted  Street  and 
Union  Park,  in  West  Monroe  and  West 
Adams  Streets,  where  the  little  green 
square  called  Jefferson  Park  nestles  be- 
tween them,  and  in  those  shady  cross- 
streets  with  the  sirenical  names  of  Ada, 
Elizabeth,  Ann,  and  May,  we  lived  as  pu- 
ritanically as  any  village  of  New  England- 
ers,  until  the  fateful  night  when  the  heavens 
to  the  south  and  east  of  us  were  reddened 
by  fire  and  the  bell  on  the  stone  Court- 
House  across  the  river  began  to  peal  a 
frantic  alarm.  Then  we  rushed  to  our  win- 
dows and  house-tops,  or   into  the  flame- 

60 


The  Great  West  Side 

lighted  streets,  to  gaze  appalled  upon  the 
conflagration  that  was  destroying  the  city. 

Through  the  slums  of  the  West  Side, 
where  it  had  started,  its  flames  leaped 
from  roof  to  roof,  the  impotent  streams 
played  upon  it  by  the  firemen  evaporat- 
ing in  its  inordinate  heat.  Fanned  by  a 
southwest  gale,  it  quickly  reached  the 
river,  where  a  blazing  brand,  carried  by 
the  wind  to  the  opposite  bank,  fell,  of  all 
places,  among  wooden  hovels  near  the  gas- 
works. In  vain  the  weary  firemen  lashed 
their  horses  across  the  bridges,  for  soon  a 
mighty  report  stifled  for  a  moment  the 
roaring  of  the  flames.  The  gas-works  had 
exploded;  the  South  Side  was  ablaze,  and 
except  for  the  glare  of  the  fire  upon  our 
window  panes,  we  of  the  favored  West  Side 
whose  houses  had  been  spared  were  in 
darkness. 

Throughout  an  agonizing  night  we 
watched  the  business  district  burn,  build- 

6i 


Chicago 

ing  by  building,  block  by  block,  then  saw 
the  angry  flames  sweep  northward.  Above 
the  roar  of  the  fire  and  the  crash  of  fall- 
ing buildings  we  heard  explosions  of  oil 
and  chemicals,  the  bell  on  the  Court- 
House  tolling  a  knell,  meanwhile,  till 
with  a  mournful  clang  it  fell  into  the  re- 
lentless flames  that  were  lapping  the  skies 
with  their  scarlet  tongues. 

When  the  sun  rose  over  the  wind- 
swept lake,  the  devastated  city  and  the 
blue  sky  above  it  were  hidden  from  our 
sight  by  dense  black  smoke,  cloud  above 
cloud,  with  gleaming  fire  beneath  it.  In 
dismay  we  saw  the  flames  rush  northward 
in  their  fury  to  the  water-works,  the 
smoke  above  them  filled  with  embers 
borne  onward  by  the  gale.  To  the  south- 
ward we  heard  dull  detonations,  and  soon 
we  knew  that  valiant  "  Little  Phil "  Sheri- 
dan had  upon  his  own  red-tapeless  in- 
itiative blown  up  several  blocks  of  houses 

62 


The  Great  West  Side 

with  army  gunpowder,  to  stop  the  south- 
ward progress  of  the  fire.  But  all  day 
long,  and  into  the  night  as  well,  it  swept 
on  to  the  north  unchecked,  until  arrested 
by  the  open  expanse  of  Lincoln  Park  and 
a  heaven-sent  shower  of  rain. 

All  day  long,  too,  the  homeless  trooped 
through  our  West  Side  streets,  begging  at 
our  doors  for  food  and  shelter,  —  some 
grimly  bearing  their  lot,  others  in  tears, 
or  frenzied  with  excitement.  Over  the 
few  bridges  that  were  still  unburned  they 
came,  driving  wagons  filled  with  house- 
hold goods,  or  trudging  hand-in-hand 
with  crying  children,  their  backs  bent  to 
the  weight  of  treasured  objects,  a  baby's 
crib,  maybe,  or  a  family  portrait.  But 
some  had  only  the  rags  they  wore,  and 
some  were  without  sufficient  clothes  to 
hide  their  nakedness;  for  I  remember  that 
my  mother  stripped  my  last  suit  from  my 
back  to  cover  a  shivering  boy  of  my  own 

63 


Chicago 

age,  I  being  put  to  bed  till  clothing  could 
be  procured  for  me. 

While  the  ruins  of  the  city  still  smoul- 
dered, our  undaunted  citizens  began  to 
rebuild  it,  and  soon  a  new  Chicago  arose 
from  its  ashes.  But  with  the  passing  of 
the  old  city,  the  character  of  the  West 
Side  altered,  its  dignified  mansions  either 
being  razed  for  factory  sites  or  reduced 
in  state.  One  by  one  its  prominent  fam- 
ilies migrated  across  the  river,  the  West 
Side  —  except  in  remote  regions  that  once 
were  pretty  suburbs  —  being  rapidly  given 
over  to  factories,  sweat-shops,  railway 
yards,  and  tenements.  Small  wonder  that 
it  became  the  scene  of  industrial  strife 
and  bloodshed,  as  during  the  railway 
strikes  of  '77  and  '94.  Once,  moreover, 
in  the  Haymarket  Square,  where  within 
my  own  memory  farmers  from  the  neigh- 
boring prairie  used  to  market  their  prod- 
uce, a  bomb  was  thrown  by  an  unknown 

64 


The  Great  West  Side 

hand  into  the  ranks  of  a  battalion  of  poHce, 
—  a  crime  for  which  four  men,  who  had 
preached,  even  if  they  had  not  practiced, 
anarchy,  were  hanged,  in  order  that  society 
might  be  safeguarded. 

To-day  the  Great  West  Side  is  the 
chosen  field  of  the  sociologist  and  the 
settlement  worker.  Within  its  area  lives 
almost  one  half  of  Chicago's  population; 
yet  scarcely  more  than  a  fifth  of  its  in- 
habitants are  of  American-born  parent- 
age. Counting  those  who  were  immi- 
grants themselves,  or  whose  parents  were 
born  in  a  foreign  land,  the  West  Side 
contains  a  German  city  as  large  as  Danzig, 
a  Polish  city  the  size  of  Posen,  and  a  Bo- 
hemian city  the  size  of  Pilsen.  It  harbors, 
too,  more  men,  women,  and  children  of 
Russian  birth  or  parentage  than  are  to  be 
found  in  Nizhni-Novgorod,  together  with 
as  many  Italians  as  there  are  in  Pisa,  and 
as  many  Swedes  as  live  in   Helsingborg. 

6S 


Chicago 

of  Norwegians  there  are  probably  as 
many  as  inhabit  Trondhjem,  and  of  the 
Irish  more  than  the  city  of  Londonderry 
houses.  Some  thirty  languages,  moreover, 
are  spoken  in  this  vast  melting-pot,  where 
scarcely  more  than  a  generation  ago  the 
customs,  speech,  and  traditions  of  New 
England  were  so  firmly  planted  that  they 
seemed  ineradicable. 


Michigan  Boulevard  at  the  Art  Institute 


IV.    The  South  Side 


IV 
THE  SOUTH   SIDE 

ALTHOUGH  the  North  Side  is  now 
their  abiding-place,  many  of  our 
"first  families"  lived  until  a  decade  or  so 
ago  in  houses  of  the  South  Side,  which 
have  either  been  altered  into  automobile 
show-rooms,  or  display  in  their  dingy  win- 
dows the  sign  "  Rooms  and  Board."  The 
encroachments  of  business,  however,  rather 
than  any  fickleness  on  the  part  of  its  in- 
habitants, have  altered  the  character  of 
this  once  fair  portion  of  the  city,  many  a 
loyal  South-Sider  having  dwelt  in  his  old 
home  near  the  lake  until  his  light  and 
air  were  diminished  by  giant  buildings,  or 
rouged  denizens  of  the  underworld  be- 
came his  neighbors. 

Only  Hyde  Park,  a  quondam  suburb, 
has  been  able  to  withstand  the  incursions 

69 


Chicago 

of  both  industry  and  infamy.  Being  the 
most  American  portion  of  the  city,  it  has 
fought,  back  to  the  wall,  with  New  Eng- 
land weapons,  protective  associations  and 
law  and  order  leagues  having  thus  far  pre- 
served its  upright  character.  Containing 
the  only  "  dry  district "  in  an  otherwise 
"wet  town,"  Hyde  Park  was,  until  some 
thirty  years  ago,  an  outlying  village  with 
trees  in  its  quiet  streets  and  lawns  sur- 
rounding its  decorous  houses. 

But  the  South  Side  itself  did  not  be- 
come a  favorite  place  of  residence  until 
the  digging  of  the  canal  had  increased 
our  population  twenty-fold  in  as  many 
years,  and  the  "  strap  rails  "  of  our  first 
railway  had  been  laid  across  the  western 
plains. 

When  other  tracks  had  been  put  upon 
piles  in  the  lake  to  deface  for  all  time 
our  beautiful  water  front,  and  Chicago 
had  been  linked  by  rail  with  the  East,  the 

70 


In  the  Stockyards 


,M 


The  South  Side 

driving  of  cattle  and  hogs  through  the 
streets  became  such  a  nuisance  that  the 
"Bull's  Head"  stockyards  on  the  West 
Side  were  abandoned,  the  "  Myrick  Yards " 
near  the  new  railway  tracks  along  the  lake 
shore  becoming  the  seat  of  our  most 
noted  industry,  until  it  moved  westward 
to  its  present  site. 

Transformed  during  these  "boom" 
years  from  a  frontier  town  into  a  city 
of  an  hundred  thousand  souls,  Chicago 
became,  in  the  characteristically  modest 
words  of  a  local  guide-book,  "the  great 
commercial  entrepot  of  the  lakes  and  Up- 
per Mississippi,  surpassing  as  a  grain  and 
lumber  market  any  in  the  world."  As  a 
hog  emporium,  however,  it  was  still  ex- 
celled by  Cincinnati,  the  title  of  Pork- 
opolis  not  being  wrested  from  this  rival 
until  army  contracts  had  enriched  our 
packers. 

Chicago   bore   at   the   time   the  name 

71 


Chicago 

of  «  Garden  City,"  its  streets  being  lined 
with  shade  trees,  and  its  lawns  adorned 
with  flower-beds.  A  profusion  of  wild 
flowers,  moreov^er,  mingled  with  the  wav- 
ing grasses  of  the  prairies  bordering  it 
upon  the  west,  while  to  the  north  there 
were  virgin  forests;  and  also  to  the  south, 
where  Senator  Stephen  A.  Douglas  had 
given  ten  acres  of  wooded  land  as  a  site 
for  a  university. 

When  Lincoln's  great  adversary  died, 
a  handful  of  students  were  already  seek- 
ing an  education  in  a  castellated  building 
of  white  limestone  standing  on  the  lake 
shore  between  the  city  and  Hyde  Park. 
A  tew  loyal  Chicagoans  had  just  seized 
the  town  of  Cairo  and  fired  the  first 
Western  shot  of  civil  war ;  so,  when  a 
training  camp  for  volunteers  was  estab- 
lished near  the  university  our  dead  Sena- 
tor had  founded,  his  name  was  reverently 
given  to  it.   When  another  great  Illinoisan 

72 


The  South  Side 

captured  Fort  Donelson,  Camp  Douglas 
housed  his  prisoners. 

Throughout  the  war  it  remained  a 
prison  compound,  as  well  as  a  thorn  in 
Chicago's  side;  for  whenever  Southern 
■captives  died  from  the  rigors  of  the  cli- 
mate, our  Copperheads  accused  the  au- 
thorities of  cruelty  and  neglect;  and  at 
one  time  they  even  plotted  an  uprising 
of  the  prisoners,  who  were  to  burn  and 
loot  the  city.  But  their  seditious  plans 
were  uncovered  before  they  were  hatched, 
and  soon  they  were  either  "skedaddling" 
to  the  disloyal  southern  portion  of  the 
State,  or  marching  before  the  muzzles  ot 
Federal  guns,  to  join  the  very  men  they 
had  planned  to  liberate. 

Being  both  a  base  of  supplies  for  the 
army  and  a  mobilization  point,  as  well  as 
a  hotbed  of  sedition,  Chicago  became  a 
profitable  haunt  for  those  war  leeches, 
the  contractor  and   the  bounty-jumper; 

73 


Chicago 

while  "black-legs"  and  "war-widows" 
flocked  to  the  city  in  such  numbers  that 
by  night  the  downtown  streets  were  the 
scene  of  brazen  riotry.  But  meanwhile 
the  city's  loyal  young  men  were  marching 
forth  to  war,  and  their  fathers,  under  the 
leadership  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  were 
raising  and  equipping  regiments.  Their 
mothers  and  sisters,  too,  were  making 
bandages  and  lint,  or  working  like  Tro- 
jans for  the  success  of  our  memorable 
Sanitary  Fairs. 

The  first  of  these  took  place  in  Bryan 
Hall  when  hostilities  were  at  their  height, 
but  the  second  was  not  held  until  we  had 
bowed  our  heads  in  sorrow  while  the  body 
of  a  martyrdd  President  was  borne  through 
the  streets  to  the  tolling  of  bells  and  the 
booming  of  minute  guns.  The  joy  of  vic- 
tory being  stilled  by  grief,  the  temporary 
Fair  building,  which  had  been  erected 
where   the    Public    Library    now    stands, 

74 


The  Douglas  Monument 


The  South  Side 

became  a  house  of  mourning  rather  than 
a  place  of  gaiety;  but  the  return  of  our 
victorious  troops  and  the  presence  at  the 
Fair  of  both  Grant  and  Sherman  made 
us  so  gratefully  benevolent  that  a  quarter 
of  a  million  dollars  was  poured  into  the 
coffers  of  the  Sanitary  Commission,  the 
Red  Cross  of  those  days. 

The  city  had  prospered  during  the  war, 
and  its  population  had  doubled  ;  but  soon 
the  Great  Fire  laid  it  low.  When  a  new 
Chicago  emerged  from  the  ashes,  the 
broad  avenues  of  the  South  Side  became 
a  favored  abode  of  our  wealthiest  men. 
Before  the  Fire,  the  lake  front,  as  well 
as  Wabash  Avenue  and  State  Street,  had 
been  lined  as  far  north  as  the  present 
Loop  by  their  residences  of  white  lime- 
stone or  red  brick,  standing  either  singly- 
with  lawns  surrounding  them  or  collec- 
tively in  blocks,  as  they  were  called,  upon 
whose   stone   doorsteps   they  used  to   sit 

IS 


Chicago 

on  summer  evenings,  cooling  themselves 
with  palm-leaf  fans,  v^^hile  gossiping  with 
their  next-door  neighbors. 

Many  of  these  old-fashioned  dwellings 
were  destroyed  by  the  flames,  and  many 
others  have  been  torn  down  to  provide 
sites  for  sky-scrapers;  but  a  few  of  them 
may  still  be  seen  nestling  in  the  lee  of 
some  Michigan  Avenue  hotel  or  Wabash 
Avenue  warehouse,  or,  farther  to  the  west, 
in  State  Street,  converted  into  junk-shops 
and  saloons.  At  the  northern  end  of  Grant 
Park,  too,  there  is  an  entire  grimy  row 
of  these  houses  of  the  past,  with  gaudy 
signs  upon  their  roofs  which  at  night  blaze 
forth  in  an  array  of  disappearing  and  re- 
appearing lights;  while  here  and  there,  in 
the  midst  of  the  automobile  show-rooms 
of  Michigan  Avenue,  a  once  proud  man- 
sion stands,  with  a  dressmaker's  sign  or 
that  of  a  lodging-house  keeper  over  its 
dilapidated  door. 

76 


The  South  Side 

Over  half  a  century  ago  a  New  York, 
newspaper  declared  that  Michigan  Avenue 
might  become  "such  a  promenade  as  the 
world  cannot  equal,"  a  preeminence  it 
bade  fair  to  attain  until  the  motor-car  in- 
dustry made  it  a  commercial  street.  For 
a  score  of  years  after  the  Fire,  however, 
both  its  beauty  and  its  fashionable  su- 
premacy were  unchallenged,  except  by  its 
pretty  neighbor,  Prairie  Avenue,  where 
Marshall  Field,  George  M.  Pullman,  and 
P.  D.  Armour,  our  great  triumvirate  of 
wealth  and  industry,  dwelt,  and  where, 
for  half  a  mile  or  so  there  were  more 
of  the  "palatial  mansions"  of  which  we 
then  boasted  than  in  any  other  part  of  the 
city. 

These  were  the  years  when  newly  made 
Croesuses  built  garish  houses  in  the  shady 
avenues  of  the  South  Side,  and,  much  to 
the  scandal  of  old-fashioned  folk,  served 
wine  at  their  tables.   Our  doors  began  to 

77 


Chicago 

be  opened  then  by  sleek  men-servants 
instead  of  by  frowsy  <' second  girls"  ;  and 
our  family  rockaways  were  replaced  by 
broughams  and  victorias  with  rosettes  on 
the  head-stalls  of  their  horses,  and  pole- 
chains  to  clank  pretentiously.  For  those 
were  the  days  when  we  strove  to  outdo 
each  other,  especially  on  Derby  Day,  when 
with  field-glasses  slung  over  our  shoulders 
and  white  "top  hats"  upon  our  heads, 
we  drove  our  high-steppers  to  the  races 
at  Washington  Park  in  every  conceivable 
form  of  "trap,"  as  we  had  been  taught  by 
our  English  grooms  to  call  what  hereto- 
fore had  been  merely  a  "rig." 

It  was  during  that  era  of  inordinate 
growth  and  rapid  money-making,  when 
a  million  souls  were  added  to  its  popu- 
lation within  twenty  years,  that  Chicago 
became  known  as  the  "Windy  City,"  an 
aspersion  due  quite  as  much,  I  fear,  to 
the  boastfulness  of  its  inhabitants  as  to  the 

78 


The  South  Side 

lake  breezes  which  swept  its  streets.  But 
while  we  were  trumpeting  our  city's  ma- 
terial greatness,  aesthetic  seeds  were  scat- 
tered in  our  midst,  the  first  ardent  sower 
in  an  untilled  field  being  the  author  of 
Tom  Brown's  adventures  at  Rugby  and 
Oxford.  The  books  he  induced  his  fellow 
countrymen  to  give  us  for  our  intellectual 
betterment,  while  the  ashes  of  the  Fire  still 
smouldered,  became  the  nucleus  of  our 
Public  Library  ;  and  when  they  reached 
us,  they  were  housed  in  a  rernote  corner 
of  the  temporary  City  Hall,  whose  nick- 
name, the  "Rookery,"  has  been  perpetu- 
ated by  the  ofiice  building  now  standing 
upon  its  site. 

Like  the  Art  Institute,  which  was  cre- 
ated, meanwhile,  from  the  dust  of  the  old 
Academy  of  Design,  the  Library  moved, 
as  it  grew  in  importance,  from  place  to 
place,  until  it  found  its  permanent  abode 
in  Michigan  Avenue.    But  before  its  pres- 

79 


Chicago 

ent  building  had  obliterated  a  little  pub- 
lic square,  called  Dearborn  Park,  or  the 
walls  of  the  Art  Institute  had  risen  near 
the  original  mouth  of  the  river,  a  ram- 
shackle structure  of  brick  and  glass,  sur- 
mounted by  three  wooden  domes  and  a 
veritable  forest  of  flag-poles,  had  stood 
for  a  score  of  years  on  a  pile  of  fire  debris 
dumped  into  the  lake,  —  the  Inter-State 
Industrial  Exposition  Building,  I  mean, 
where  Chicagoans  of  my  generation  ac- 
quired their  first  taste  for  the  Fine  Arts. 
Here,  as  an  adjunct  to  the  dry-goods, 
millinery,  and  manufactures,  which  were 
exhibited  each  autumn  to  benefit  the  city's 
trade,  a  collection  of  modern  paintings 
and  sculpture  was  displayed;  and  here, 
in  a  wing,  converted  temporarily  into  an 
indoor  beer-garden,  Theodore  Thomas 
used  to  wield  his  baton  during  the  month 
of  June,  his  symphonic  concerts  in  this 
quaint   building  being  the  harbingers  of 

80 


The  Library 


The  South  Side 

those  now  given  just  across  the  street  by 
the  orchestra  of  which  he  was  the  founder. 

Before  public-spirited  citizens  had  built 
the  Auditorium,  grand  opera,  too,  was 
sung  in  the  Exposition  Building,  where 
pedestrian  contests  and  horse  shows  were 
also  held,  and  where  Garfield  was  nom- 
inated for  the  Presidency.  Our  finest 
achievement,  moreover,  was  conceived 
beneath  its  tawdry  domes ;  for  at  the  an- 
nual meeting  of  its  stockholders,  held  in 
1885,  it  was  resolved  that  a  great  world's 
fair  be  held  in  Chicago,  to  commemorate 
the  four  hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
landing  of  Columbus. 

That  an  uncouth  Western  town  should 
presume  to  represent  the  nation,  appeared 
mere  bumptiousness  to  jealous  cities  of 
the  East;  and  when  Congress  had  finally 
selected  Chicago  as  the  site  of  the  World's 
Columbian  Exposition,  their  contempt 
was  uttered  so  loudly  that  it  reverberated 

81 


Chicago 

across  the  Atlantic  to  fill  the  hearts  of 
prospective  exhibitors  with  misgiving.  An- 
gered by  these  sneers,  Chicago  chose  the 
words  "I  Will"  as  a  battle-cry. 

Though  millions  were  raised  for  it  in 
panicky  times,  the  success  of  the  enter- 
prise we  fondly  call  our  World's  Fair  was 
due  far  less  to  the  talent  of  its  officers 
than  to  the  genius  of  its  designer,  John 
Wellborn  Root,  and  of  the  men  selected 
to  execute  his  plans.  When  these  were 
gathered  together  for  the  first  time,  Saint- 
Gaudens  acclaimed  it  the  greatest  meet- 
ing of  artists  since  the  fifteenth  century,  a 
hyperbole  justified  by  their  achievement, 
for  at  a  time  when  mansard-roofs  and 
Qiieen  Anne  houses  were  disfiguring  the 
land  far  and  wide,  they  created  beside 
the  most  material  of  cities  an  ethereal 
city,  so  perfect  in  outline  that  it  inspired 
even  the  prosaic  beholder  with  a  longing 
for  beauty  in  his  daily  life.    It  was  called 

82 


The  South  Side 

the  "White  City,"  and  by  day  its  walls 
and  columns,  immaculate  against  an  azure 
lake  and  sky,  made  this  an  inevitable 
name ;  but  when  the  sun  set  over  the 
prairies  beyond,  it  became  a  place  of 
magic.  Then  the  forms  of  its  palaces 
were  etched  in  fire  against  the  blackness 
of  the  night,  and  while  its  fountains  ex- 
tended their  misty  veils  before  the  won- 
dering crowds  upon  the  banks  of  its  la- 
goons, gondolas  mellow  with  the  light 
of  lanterns,  mirthful  with  the  songs  of 
Venice,  glided  out  of  the  darkness,  and 
rockets  shot  upward  from  behind  an  en- 
chanting peristyle  to  burst  in  a  nebula 
of  stars. 

But  the  building  of  our  Fair  and  the 
enjoyment  of  its  marvels  left  us  listless. 
When  the  cosmopolitan  crowds  had  gone, 
we  tried  in  vain  to  return  to  our  hum- 
drum ways.  Brilliant  men  and  women 
from  far  and  wide  had  been  crossing  our 

83 


Chicago 

thresholds,  and  royalty,  even,  had  been 
in  our  midst.  We  had  grown  accustomed 
to  officers  in  uniform  and  distinguished 
foreigners  with  tiny  decorations  dangling 
en  brochette  upon  the  lapels  of  their  even- 
ing coats;  so  we  became  bored  with  our 
commonplace  selves  and  regardless  of  the 
motto  "  I  Will."  Furthermore,  our  purses 
were  empty,  and  we  were  forced  to  skimp 
in  order  to  pay  the  inordinate  debts  with 
which  a  fleeting  year  of  world-wide  emi- 
nence had  saddled  us.  Meanwhile,  the 
sign  "For  Rent"  darkened  the  windows 
of  stores  and  apartments,  and  the  swards 
of  the  parks  were  black  with  the  recum- 
bent forms  of  the  unemployed.  There 
were  strikes,  moreover,  of  a  riotous  kind, 
and  while  they  were  being  quelled,  the 
white  tents  of  an  army  dotted  the  lake 
front. 

Being  the  host  of  the  World's  Fair,  the 
South  Side  had  expanded  inordinately  to 

84 


Columbus  Caravels  of  iS()2  near  La  Rabida  Convent 


The  South  Side 

receive  the  crowds ;  therefore  it  suffered 
during  this  distressing  aftermath  more  se- 
verely than  its  sister  divisions.  But  when 
a  new  century  dawned,  and  the  city, 
heartened  afresh,  began  to  compete  with 
its  old-time  zeal  for  the  industrial  su- 
premacy of  the  land,  both  the  fortunes 
and  the  aspect  of  the  South  Side  altered. 
Factories,  furnaces,  and  cattle-pens  began 
to  cover  its  bare  prairies,  and  row  upon 
row  of  new  houses  and  apartment  build- 
ings to  appear  upon  its  vacant  lots.  Its 
proud  mansions,  meanwhile,  were  razed 
to  make  room  for  places  of  business, 
or  reduced  to  housing  quacks  and  petty 
tradesmen.  One  by  one  their  owners  mi- 
grated to  the  Lake  Shore  Drive  or  its 
adjacent  streets,  the  white  macadam  on 
which  their  carriages  and  phaetons  used 
to  rumble  being  oiled  a  dingy  brown  to 
make  a  highway  for  motor  cars. 

Spreading  trees  of  Michigan  Avenue's 

85 


x 


Chicago 

former  days  have  been  replaced  by  cement 
posts  with  clusters  of  electric  lights  upon 
them,  and  in  the  full  mile  of  its  length 
which  parallels  the  lake,  massive  twenty- 
story  buildings  have  arisen  :  though  losing 
in  beauty,  it  has  gained  in  grandeur.  Here 
are  the  finest  hotels  and  the  smartest  shops, 
the  clubs,  the  Auditorium,  the  Public  Li- 
brary, and  Orchestra  Hall,  and,  flanked 
by  fountains  and  pylons  in  the  green  park 
opposite,  the  Art  Institute;  for  here  is 
centered  the  assthetic  as  well  as  the  wordly 
life  of  the  city. 

I  sat,  not  long  ago,  on  the  deck  of  a 
yacht  in  the  harbor,  marveling  at  the  sight 
of  Chicago  by  night.  Around  me  dim 
anchor-lights  were  glimmering  over  the 
water;  while  the  steam  of  locomotives, 
curling  upward  in  fantastic  clouds,  veiled 
the  huge  buildings  before  me  in  alluring 
mystery.  Far  above  the  glare  of  Michigan 
Avenue,  their  roofs   and   pinnacles  were 

86 


The  South  Side 

outlined  against  the  city's  radiance.  Some 
were  in  darkness,  others  rimmed  with 
light;  here  and  there  an  electric  sign 
flashed  its  brilliant  hues;  into  the  waves 
beyond  reached  the  Municipal  Pier,  its 
graceful  towers  and  slender  form  ablaze 
with  innumerable  lamps. 

Under  the  spell  of  the  scene  I  pictured 
a  little  garrison  retreating  in  despair  along 
a  desert  shore  barely  a  century  ago;  then 
tried  to  realize  that  yonder  broad  stretch 
of  parkland  had  been  made  before  my 
eyes,  and  that  I  had  seen  one  row  of 
buildings  on  this  water  front  destroyed 
by  fire,  and  still  another  demolished  to 
make  way  for  these  mighty  structures 
looming  in  the  night. 


Where  the  Lake  Shore  Drive  begins 


V.    The  North  Side 


-r.--'-^' 


V 
THE  NORTH  SIDE 

CHICAGO  appeared  raw  and  bare  to 
Miss  Harriet  Martiheau  when  she 
visited  it  exactly  eighty  years  ago:  yet  she 
confessed  that  she  had  never  seen  a  busier 
place.  It  was  enjoying  at  the  time  a  boom 
in  land  values  which  a  panic  was  soon  to 
dispel,  and  storekeepers  hailed  her,  as  she 
passed  their  doors,  with  ofFers  of  farms  and 
building-sites.  The  streets,  moreover,  were 
filled  with  speculators  who  crowded  about 
a  scarlet-coated  negro  on  a  white  horse 
whenever  he  waved  a  red  flag  and  shouted 
the  time  and  place  of  the  next  sale  of  lots 
along  the  proposed  course  of  the  Illinois 
and  Michigan  Canal. 

Though  the  city  numbered  less  than 
five  thousand  inhabitants  then,  the  Eng- 
lish authoress  acknowledges  that  there  was 

91 


Chicago 

"some  allowable  pride  in  the  place  about 
its  society,"  her  astonishment  at  having 
found  "an  assemblage  of  educated,  re- 
fined, and  wealthy  persons  living  on  the 
edge  of  a  wild  prairie"  being  shared,  I 
venture  to  say,  by  many  an  Eastern  vis- 
itor to  the  Chicago  of  the  present  day. 
Yet  having  known  in  former  years  some 
of  the  very  men  and  women  who  inspired 
"the  lively  and  pleasant  associations"  of 
which  she  speaks,  I  can  confirm  her  testi- 
mony in  regard  to  their  culture. 

Her  host  was  WiUiam  B.  Ogden,  our 
first  Mayor,  of  whomGuizot,  the  historian, 
said,  when  viewing  his  portrait:  "That  is 
the  representative  American,  who  is  the 
benefactor  of  his  country,  especially  of  the 
mighty  West :  He  built  Chicago."  And 
the  young  lawyer  who  "  threw  behind  him 
the  five  hundred  dollars  a  day"  he  was 
making,  in  order  to  accompany  her  to 
Mount  Joliet,  was    Isaac  N.  Arnold,  the 

92 


The  North  Side 

friend  of  Lincoln,  who  introduced  into 
Congress  the  first  resolution  for  the  abo- 
lition of  slavery.  The  distinguished  visi- 
tor, moreover,  at  a  reception  held  for  her 
by  Mrs.  John  S.  Wright,  undoubtedly  met 
many  of  the  men  whose  names  are  in- 
scribed in  our  Golden  Book  :  John  D.  Ca- 
ton,  the  lawyer,  for  instance;  John  Blatch- 
ford,  the  Presbyterian  Minister;  Alonzo 
Huntington,  the  State's  Attorney;  Mark. 
Skinner,  the  school  inspector;  Philo  Car- 
penter, the  druggist;  Charles  Walker,  the 
merchant;  and  perhaps  young  George  W. 
Meeker,  a  crippled  student  of  the  law, 
well  versed  in  French  and  Latin. 

Miss  Martineau's  good  opinion  of  the 
founders  of  our  city  was  shared  thirteen 
years  later  by  Fredrika  Bremer,  a  Swedish 
novelist  of  world-wide  reputation  at  the 
time,  who  disliked  the  ugliness  of  Chicago, 
but  considered  some  of  its  twenty-five 
thousand  inhabitants  "the  most  agreeable 

93 


Chicago 

and  delightful  people  she  had  ever  met 
anywhere."  They  were  "Good  people, 
handsome,  and  intelligent,"  she  declared; 
<'  people  to  live  with,  people  to  talk  with, 
people  to  like  and  grow  tond  of,  both  men 
and  women;  people  who  do  not  ask  the 
stranger  a  hundred  questions,  but  who  give 
him  an  opportunity  of  seeing  and  learn- 
ing in  the  most  agreeable  manner  which 
he  can  desire;  rare  people!  And  besides 
that,  people  who  are  not  too  horribly 
pleased  with  themselves  and  their  world, 
and  their  city,  and  their  country,  as  is  so 
often  the  casein  small  towns,  but  who  see 
deficiencies  and  can  speak  of  them  prop- 
erly, andean  bear  to  hear  others  speak  of 
them  also." 

Within  a  restricted  part  of  the  vast  city 
of  the  present  day  the  descendants  of  those 
whose  refinement  and  education  impressed 
both  Miss  Martineau  and  Miss  Bremer  so 
favorably  still  maintain   the  traditions  of 

94 


The  North  Side 

their  race,  Chicago  being  socially  a  New 
England  town  as  strait-laced  as  Boston. 
The  reader  whose  opinion  of  us  has  been 
formed  from  the  lurid  tales  of  our  de- 
pravity which  appear  in  magazines  and 
newspapers,  or  from  a  sojourn  of  a  day  or 
two  at  some  hotel  within  the  Loop,  will 
smile  incredulously  at  this  comparison; 
yet  even  while  risking  martyrdom  at  the 
stake  of  popular  opinion,  I  boldly  declare 
the  society  of  Chicago  to  be  more  puri- 
tanical than  that  of  any  great  city  in  the 
world. 

Since  my  dictionary  defines  "society," 
in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  used  this  word, 
as  that  portion  of  a  community  "whose 
movements  and  entertainments  and  other 
doings  are  more  or  less  conspicuous,"  "ar- 
istocracy" is  manifestly  the  term  I  should 
have  chosen  to  indicate  the  class  I  have  in 
mind.  However,  it  connotes  age;  there- 
fore, it  may  provoke  another  smile.   Yet 

95 


Chicago 

the  blood  of  the  people  whom  Miss  Mar- 
tineau  and  Miss  Bremer  met  was  as  old 
and  pure  as  any  in  the  land;  hence  I  feel 
justified  in  using  this  word  to  qualify  their 
descendants. 

A  few  of  the  founders  of  Chicago  were 
from  Virginia  and  Kentucky;  yet  the  ma- 
jority, coming  from  New  England  or 
northern  New  York,  brought  with  them 
the  tenets  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  which 
they  planted  so  deeply  in  the  soil  that 
even  in  this  day  and  generation  many  of 
their  progeny  refuse  to  serve  wine  to  their 
guests,  or  to  desecrate  the  Sabbath  with 
a  healthful  game  of  golf.  Though  other 
descendants  of  the  pioneers  observe  the 
puritanical  traditions  less  strictly,  as  a  class 
they  form  a  leavening  influence  in  the  life 
of  the  city,  a  notable  proportion  ot  the 
men  and  women  who  direct  its  charities 
or  manage  its  institutions  of  learning  and 
culture  being  recruited  from  the  ranks  of 

96 


The  North  Side 

those  whose  fathers  or  grandfathers  settled 
on  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan  within  a 
score  of  years  after  the  Black  Hawk  War. 

Although  this  class  of  the  commun- 
ity has  ceased  to  govern  politically,  its 
ideals  are  still  potent;  therefore  it  seems 
to  me  to  fall  within  the  finer  meaning  of 
the  word  "aristocracy."  To  describe  its 
lighter-hearted  members,  whose  more  or 
less  conspicuous  doings  adorn  the  pages 
of  the  newspapers,  "society"  may  be  the 
preferable  term;  yet  even  these  toil  as 
their  fathers  did  before  them,  Chicago 
being  a  city  without  a  leisure  class. 

In  the  years  before  the  Fire  it  was  so- 
cially a  united  city,  but  now  the  well-to- 
do  citizens  who  formerly  lived  in  West 
Washington  Street  and  Ashland  Avenue, 
or  in  the  shady  boulevards  of  the  South 
Side,  have  migrated  one  by  one  to  the 
region  lying  between  the  Virginia  Hotel 
and   Lincoln    Park,   this  portion    of  the 

97 


Chicago 

North  Side  being  now  the  abode  of  most 
of  the  families  which  were  eminent  in  the 
days  before  the  Fire,  as  well  as  of  those 
whose  wealth  is  surpassing.  In  Hyde  Park 
and  Kenwood,  however,  two  former  sub- 
urbs of  the  South  Side,  a  few  old  Chi- 
cagoans  still  dwell,  their  sedate  household 
gods  protected  from  the  iconoclasm  of 
business  by  the  walls  of  our  University. 
In  this  seemly  neighborhood  the  atmos- 
phere is  academic,  an  element  which  dis- 
tinguishes its  life  from  that  of  the  North 
Side,  where  there  is  a  greater  indulgence 
in  the  gaieties  which  attend  society  the 
world  over. 

That  the  North  Side  has  long  been 
a  factor  in  our  social  life  is  evidenced 
by  a  certain  Mrs.  Baird,  who  paid  trib- 
ute a  century  ago  to  the  "hospitable  in- 
mates of  the  pleasant  Kinzie  home,"  the 
fare  of  whose  table  was  "  all  an  epicure 
could  desire."     Gurdon  S.  Hubbard,  too, 

98 


The  North  Side 

was  a  guest  at  this  board,  when,  as  clerk 
of  a  "brigade"of  John  Jacob  Astor's  voy- 
ageurs,  he  visited  for  the  first  time  the  site 
of  the  future  metropolis  he  was  to  assist 
in  creating.  Indeed,  the  Kinzies  may  be 
said  to  be  the  founders  of  our  society  as 
well  as  of  our  city,  especially  since  a  beau- 
tiful daughter  of  the  house  was  portrayed 
by  Healy.  When  this  artist  arrived  on 
the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan,  Chicago 
numbered  about  seventy-five  thousand 
people,  all  of  whom  I  verily  believe  he 
painted.  Nevertheless,  the  possession  of  a 
Healy  portrait  is  an  incontestible  proof 
of  a  Chicago  family's  ancient  lineage. 

But  I  am  traveling  apace,  since  I  meant 
to  record  that  both  Miss  Martineau  and 
Miss  Bremer  were  entertained  at  dinner 
by  the  second  generation  of  the  Kinzies 
and  heard  from  the  lips  of  the  author  of 
"Waubun"  the  story  of  the  "Massacre." 
The   English  visitor,  moreover,  attended 

99 


Chicago 

divine  service  in  a  large  room  of  the  Lake 
House,  a  brick  hotel  which  had  just  been 
erected  at  the  corner  of  Rush  and  Michi- 
gan Streets  with  the  intention  of  making 
the  North  Side  the  centre  of  the  city's 
life.  Being  inaccessible  to  the  business  dis- 
trict, except  by  ferry,  this  hostelry  proved, 
in  the  words  of  an  early  chronicler,  "  sure 
death  to  its  landlords,"  and  within  a  few 
years  was  sold  for  a  tenth  of  its  cost  and 
converted  into  apartments. 

Though  this  attempt  to  turn  the  tide 
of  affairs  northward  ended  in  disaster,  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Lake  House  became 
a  favorite  place  of  residence  and  soon  was 
filled  with  stately  mansions  surrounded 
by  lawns  and  shade  trees.  But  the  aspect 
of  the  North  Side,  like  that  of  the  other 
divisions  of  the  city,  has  altered  as  time 
passed,  the  part  of  it  which  is  now  most 
fashionable  having  been  a  Catholic  ceme- 
tery in  the  days  before  the  Fire.   With  a 

lOO 


The  North  Side 

wholesome  regard  for  their  throats  and 
noses  our  fathers  built  their  houses  away 
from  the  lake,  Dearborn  and  LaSalle  Ave- 
nues being  the  streets  which  they  pre- 
ferred. Indeed,  until  almost  the  time  of 
the  World's  Fair  what  is  now  the  Lake 
Shore  Drive  was  a  barren,  wind-swept 
strand. 

Being  a  place  of  residence  rather  than 
of  trade,  the  North  Side  has  been  com- 
paratively free  from  strikes  and  riots  such 
as  the  more  commercial  divisions  of  the 
city  have  witnessed  from  time  to  time. 
Yet  the  first  turbulence  which  disturbed 
the  even  tenor  of  our  municipal  ways  was 
engendered  in  the  part  of  it  inhabited  by 
Germans ;  for  at  the  time  when  Know- 
Nothing-ism  was  rife  in  the  land,  the  city 
had  a  Mayor  of  that  persuasion  who  sought 
to  enforce  a  Sunday-closing  regulation 
which  previously  had  been  a  dead  letter. 

While   a   test  case  was   being   tried  in 

lOI 


Chicago 

the  Court-House,  a  mob  of  saloon-keep- 
ers and  their  adherents  gathered  on  the 
North  Side,  and,  headed  by  a  fife  and 
drum, proceeded  toward  the  Public  Square 
resolved  to  end  the  legal  proceedings  by 
violence.  Improbable  though  it  may  ap- 
pear, the  police  force  of  that  day  was 
composed  entirely  of  native  Americans, 
and  with  Yankee  astuteness  its  chief  per- 
mitted a  portion  of  the  rioters  to  cross 
the  river  to  the  South  Side;  whereupon 
the  Clark  Street  Bridge  was  swung  and 
the  mob  divided  in  half,  a  ruse  whereby 
it  was  quelled  in  sections,  though  not 
without  bloodshed.  But  before  peace 
could  be  made  to  reign  throughout  the 
city,  the  Mayor  was  forced  to  order  out 
the  militia  and  place  cannon  in  the  Pub- 
lic Square,  and  not  until  the  present  day 
has  any  chief  magistrate  dared  to  menace 
anew  the  right  of  our  German  citizens  to 
the  enjoyment  of  their  Sunday  beer. 

I02 


In  Clark  Street  at  the  Court  House 


The  North  Side 

Since  the  time  when  a  lawless  shanty 
settlement  called  "  Kilgubbin  "  was  estab- 
lished in  Kinzie  Street,  the  North  Side 
has  been  the  field  of  an  almost  constant 
warfare  waged  against  squatters  and  their 
rights,  the  most  spectacular  attack  upon 
them  having  been  made  in  the  year  1857 
by  "Long  John"  Wentworth,  when,  as 
Mayor,  he  marched  the  police  and  fire 
department  to  a  nefarious  part  of  the 
Lake  Shore  called  "  The  Sands "  and 
razed  its  brothels,  amid  the  cheers  and 
hisses  of  the  populace.  Some  thirty  years 
later  the  notorious  Captain  George  Wel- 
lington Streeter,  while  navigating  the  lake 
in  his  galleon,  was  stranded  on  these  very 
sands.  Finding  his  craft  high  and  dry 
when  the  storm  had  subsided,  he  claimed 
the  land  surrounding  it  by  right  of  dis- 
covery, and  even  a  term  served  in  the 
penitentiary  for  resisting  officers  of  the 
law    with  deadly   weapons    has  failed    to 

103 


Chicago 

daunt  him;  so  to  this  day  he  remains  a  thorn 
in  the  flesh  of  the  rightful  owners  of  what  he 
terms  the  "Deestrict  of  Lake  Michigan." 
Except  for  this  warfare  against  sqqatter 
sovereignty,  the  North  Side  has  led  a  rel- 
atively peaceful  life.  The  Great  Fire  de- 
stroyed it  utterly,  however,  for  after  its 
ravages  only  the  frame  mansion  of  Mahlon 
D.  Ogden  and  the  cottage  of  a  policeman 
named  Bellinger  remained  unburned  in 
practically  the  entire  portion  of  it  ly- 
ing between  the  river  and  Lincoln  Park. 
While  the  fame  of  the  flght  made  with 
blankets  and  buckets  of  water  to  preserve 
the  Ogden  house  from  destruction  is  the 
more  widespread,  Bellinger's  struggle  to 
save  his  humble  dwelling  is  the  more  he- 
roic; since  he  fought  the  flames  single- 
handed  until  his  cistern  ran  dry,  and  then 
with  the  inspiration  of  a  genius  quenched 
them  with  the  contents  of  his  cider  bar- 
rels. 

104 


The  North  Side 

To-day  not  a  single  building  remains 
of  those  which  stood  between  the  river 
and  Lincoln  Park  in  the  days  before  the 
Fire,  the  Ogden  house  having  long  since 
been  demolished  to  provide  a  site  for  the 
Newberry  Library.  The  North  Side,  there- 
fore, is  without  any  landmarks  of  Old  Chi- 
cago such  as  may  still  be  seen  on  the  West 
Side,  or  in  that  portion  of  the  South  Side 
which  is  adjacent  to  the  Congress  Hotel. 
There  are,  however,  in  Rush  Street  and 
Cass  Street,  as  well  as  in  the  streets  which 
intersect  them,  a  number  of  houses  built 
directly  after  the  Fire  which  bear  the  sem- 
blance of  antiquity  ;  while  in  Dearborn 
Avenue,  LaSalle  Avenue,  and  Wells  Street 
there  are  still  some  "marble-fronts"  and 
brick  mansions  with  mansard-roofs  to  re- 
call the  past,  these  having  been  favorite 
residential  streets  of  the  North  Side  until 
in  the  decade  before  the  World's  Fair  the 
tide  of  fashion  turned  eastward. 

105 


Chicago 

The  Lake  Shore  Drive  and  its  adjoin- 
ing streets  then  became  our  Mayfair.  To 
this  day,  however,  a  feu^  old  families  cling 
to  Rush  Street  and  its  traditions;  but  the 
indications  are  that  within  a  few  years 
even  the  beautiful  Lake  Shore  Drive  will 
have  altered  in  character,  a  generation  be- 
ing the  longest  period  throughout  which 
a  Chicago  street  has  been  able  to  main- 
tain its  social  supremacy.  Already  a  small 
colony  of  fashionables  has  been  estab- 
lished north  of  Lincoln  Park  upon  land 
which  only  yesterday  was  reclaimed  from 
the  lake;  therefore  it  seems  likely  that  the 
exclusive  quarter  ot  the  next  generation 
will  be  this  newly  made  portion  oi  the 
Lake  Shore. 

The  vast  pleasure-ground  which  sep- 
arates the  Mayfair  of  to-day  from  that  of 
to-morrow  was  originally  known  as  Cem- 
etery Park,  and  it  extended  only  from 
half  a  block  north  of  Wisconsin  Street  to 

io6 


Rush  Street  in  the  Old  Residential  Section 


#i^W  .^ 


mn 


4WA 


"-'A 


'  f 

"  ft***- 


{•{■%■ 


The  North  Side 

Webster  Avenue,  all  the  southern  portion 
of  its  present  acreage  having  once  been  a 
cemetery.  Toward  the  end  of  the  Civil 
War,  when  the  Common  Council  had 
forbidden  further  burials  in  the  cemetery, 
it  was  called  Lake  Park;  a  name  borne 
only  for  a  few  months,  however,  for  after 
the  assassination  of  the  Great  Emancipa- 
tor his  name  was  given  to  it. 

Within  my  lifetime  Lincoln  Park  has 
quintupled  in  area,  partly  by  the  absorp- 
tion of  the  Chicago  Cemetery,  partly  by 
the  filling  in  each  summer  of  a  portion 
of  the  lake;  it  being  the  intention  of  its 
commissioners  eventually  to  extend  it  by 
this  means  some  two  or  three  miles  north 
of  its  present  limits. 

Although  it  was  once  fastidiously  pro- 
vided with  "  keep  off  the  grass "  signs  to 
prevent  joy  and  gladness,  it  is  to-day 
quite  as  much  of  a  playground  as  a 
park,  with   tennis  courts,  baseball  fields, 

107 


Chicago 

golf  courses,  yacht  harbors,  and  bathing- 
beaches,  and  I  doubt  if  in  all  the  world 
there  is  a  civic  domain  so  widely  or  so 
democratically  used.  Indeed,  during  the 
summer  months  it  is  difficult  at  times  to 
perceive  the  grass  of  its  broad  meadows 
at  all,  so  thickly  is  it  strewn  with  coat- 
less  human  beings. 

Lincoln  Park  is  the  oldest  of  our  breath- 
ing-spots of  more  than  a  hundred  acres  in 
extent  and  the  one  most  widely  used  by 
the  people  of  the  city;  it  is  the  most  cos- 
mopolitan, too,  in  its  aspect,  the  region 
in  which  our  patricians  dwell  being  but 
a  small  part  of  one  of  the  six  wards  of 
which  the  North  Side  is  composed;  for 
although  this  is  by  far  the  smallest  division 
of  the  city,  it  houses,  nevertheless,  close 
to  half  a  million  people,  barely  more  than 
a  third  of  whom  were  born  in  these  United 
States.  Indeed,  I  venture  to  say  that  in 
Lincoln    Park   upon  a  Sunday  afternoon 

io8 


In  Lincoln  Park 


The  North  Side 

one  may  see  disporting  themselves  in  ac- 
cordance with  their  racial  predilections 
men,  women,  and  children  of  quite  as 
many  nationalities  as  there  are  kinds  of 
wild  animals  pacing  to  and  fro  in  the 
cages  of  its  zoological  garden. 

Although  we  Chicagoans  are  inordi- 
nately proud  of  the  chain  of  parks  and 
boulevards  encircling  our  city,  we  have 
failed  to  pay  due  respect  to  the  mem- 
ory of  John  S.  Wright,  the  pioneer  citizen 
who  conceived  its  glories.  "  I  foresee,"  he 
said,  when  the  city  numbered  less  than 
twenty-five  thousand  souls,  "a  time  not 
very  distant  when  Chicago  will  need  with 
its  fast-increasing  population  a  park,  or 
parks,  in  each  division.  Of  these  parks 
I  have  a  vision.  They  are  all  improved 
and  connected  with  a  wide  avenue,  ex- 
tended to  and  along  the  Lake  Shore  on 
the  north  and  south,  and  so  surround  the 
city  with  a  magnificent   chain  of  superb 

109 


Chicago 

parks   and   parkways  that  have  not  their 
equals  in  the  world." 

The  man  who  made  this  amazingly 
true  prophecy  built  at  his  own  expense 
the  city's  first  schoolhouse.  He  has  ex- 
perienced, however,  the  proverbial  fate 
of  a  prophet  in  his  own  land,  as  well  as 
the  ingratitude  of  a  democracy  ;  for  while 
Dante,  Schiller,  Goethe,  Humboldt,  Kos- 
ciuszko,  Bismarck,  and  many  lesser  aliens, 
even  to  some  of  purely  local  light,  have 
been  so  honored,  not  a  single  one  of  our 
hundred  parks  or  three  hundred  schools 
has  been  named  after  John  S.Wright.  Yet 
he  was  the  first  of  those  public-spirited 
citizens  whose  zeal  in  the  cause  of  learn- 
ing and  refinement  has  made  Chicago,  in 
spite  of  its  inordinate  materialism,  a  city 
of  such  aesthetic  fruition  that  the  munici- 
pality actually  purchases  canvases  from  the 
brushes  of  its  own  painters  to  adorn  its 
halls,  and  requires  that  a  statue,  before  it 

I  lO 


The  North  Side 

may  be  placed  in  any  of  its  parks,  shall 
be  approved  by  a  committee  composed 
of  its  leading  artists. 

But  if  Chicago  has  ceased  to  be  purely 
a  material  city,  it  is  due,  in  large  measure, 
to  the  descendants  of  those  pioneers  whose 
refinement  and  education  impressed  Har- 
riet Martineau  and  Fredrika  Bremer  so 
favorably,  a  goodly  majority  of  the  men 
and  women  who  have  created  its  insti- 
tutions of  learning  and  refinement,  or 
who  work  for  its  betterment,  being  scions 
of  those  Anglo-Saxon  families  of  New 
England  origin  who  migrated  to  Chicago 
during  the  strenuous  years  intervening 
between  the  birth  of  the  city  and  its  de- 
struction by  fire. 


T^he  Skyline  of  Park  Row 


VI.    "The  Soul  of  the  City 


i^ltj, 


„r"-<!i.ilL_i., 


VI 
THE  SOUL  OF  THE  CITY 

AMERICAN  cities  are  so  alike  in 
their  physical  aspects  that  artists  are 
wont  to  lament  their  lack  of  atmosphere. 
Each  has  a  "downtown"  of  ungainly  sky- 
scrapers, and  a  residential  quarter  filled 
with  the  Italian  palaces,  French  chateaux, 
and  Tudor  castles  of  the  rich,  or  the 
more  indigenous  colonial  mansions  and 
Spanish  mission  houses  of  the  well-to-do. 
They  all  have  squalid  tenement  districts, 
too,  and  purlieus  dotted  with  cottages 
and  bungalows,  and  in  all  of  them  apart- 
ment and  flat  buildings  have  arisen  to 
destroy  home  ties  and  disfigure  the  sky- 
line. Moreover,  they  all  have  public  build- 
ings of  pseudo-classic  architecture,  and 
macadamized  boulevards  defaced  by  gar- 
ish signs,  while  in  their  dirty  streets  trol- 

115 


Chicago 

ley  gongs  clang  and  the  horns  of  motor 
cars  made  in  Detroit  toot  the  whole  day 
long,  and  the  crowds  upon  their  sidewalks, 
dressed  in  the  same  styles  of  ready-made 
clothes,  chew  the  same  brands  of  gum. 

With  few  exceptions,  too,  our  cities 
have  corrupt  governments  and  bands  of 
valiant  reformers  striving  for  their  better- 
ment; so  that  spiritually  as  well  as  phys- 
ically they  appear  to  the  casual  beholder 
to  be  of  a  piece.  Nevertheless,  when  I 
read,  in  a  magazine  article  not  long  ago, 
the  statement  that  "American  cities  are 
all  alike,"  I  felt  that  the  writer's  view  was 
utterly  superficial;  for,  in  spite  of  their 
bodily  likeness,  their  souls  are  different, 
the  soul  of  a  city  being,  to  my  mind,  that 
emotional  or  intellectual  part  of  it  which 
finds  expression  in  its  moral  achieve- 
ments. 

In  the  comic  press  New  York  is  char- 
acterized   by   affluence,    Philadelphia   by 

ii6 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

pride  of  birth,  and  Boston  by  intellectu- 
ality. There  are  families  in  New  York, 
however,  as  old  as  any  in  Philadelphia, 
and  men  in  Boston  as  vulgarly  rich  as  any 
in  New  York.  There  are  women  in  Phil- 
adelphia, too,  as  intellectual  as  any  in  Bos- 
ton; yet  in  each  of  these  cities  there  is 
an  inherent  trait  sufficiently  marked  to 
justify  this  satire. 

By  the  same  token,  I  confess  that  Chi- 
cago contains  a  sufficient  number  of  brag- 
garts with  strident  voices  to  warrant  its 
sobriquet  of  "Windy  City."  Boastfulness, 
however,  is  not  its  chief  characteristic,  but 
rather  that  energetic  desire  to  be  up  and 
doing,  which  is  best  defined  by  the  col- 
loquial word  vim.  The  microbe  of  the 
«  Chicago  Spirit,"  as  this  forcible  element 
of  its  soul  is  fondly  called,  is  disseminated, 
I  firmly  believe,  by  the  breezes  of  Lake 
Michigan  ;  for,  while  it  is  possible  to  lead 
a  tranquil  or  even  a  complacent  existence 

117 


Chicago 

in  other  places,  no  sooner  does  one  snifF 
the  air  of  Chicago  than  Hfe  becomes  a 
turmoil  of  duty,  every  waking  hour  of 
which  is  burdened  by  some  obligation 
which  must  be  fulfilled  before  nightfall, 
the  word  manana  having  no  place  in  our 
vocabulary. 

Indeed  our  impulsive  city  is  one  huge 
kettle  of  energy  seething  the  whole  day 
long,  no  healthy  man  or  woman  being 
able  to  exist  without  work  of  some  kind  or 
other  to  do.  Strangely  enough  its  strenu- 
ous future  was  foreseen  by  the  Chevalier 
de  la  Salle,  almost  the  first  white  man  to 
breathe  its  invigorating  air.  In  a  letter 
written  upon  the  banks  of  the  Chicago 
River  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago,  he  made  this  amazing  prophecy:  — 

This  is  the  lowest  point  on  the  divide  between 
the  two  great  valleys  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the 
Mississippi.  The  boundless  regions  of  the  West 
must  send  their  products  to  the  East  through  this 

ii8 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

point.  This  will  be  the  gate  of  empire,  this  the 
seat  of  commerce.  Everything  invites  to  action. 
The  typical  man  who  will  grow  up  here  must  be 
an  enterprising  man.  Each  day  as  he  rises  he  will 
exclaim,  "I  act,  I  move,  I  push,"  and  there  will 
be  spread  before  him  a  boundless  horizon,  an  illim- 
itable field  of  activity.  A  limitless  expanse  of  plain 
is  here —  to  the  east,  water  and  at  all  other  points, 
land.  If  I  were  to  give  this  place  a  name  I  would 
derive  it  from  the  nature  of  the  place  and  the  na- 
ture of  the  man  who  will  occupy  this  place  —  ago, 
I  act;  circum,  all  around:   "  Circago." 

The  enterprising  inhabitants  of  this 
gate  of  empire  do  arise  each  morning  to 
exclaim,  "  I  act,  I  move,  I  push,"  it  being 
a  city  without  idlers.  The  few  men  of 
leisure  it  has  bred  acquired  their  fond- 
ness for  a  life  of  ease  in  foreign  lands, 
and  knowing  the  insalubrity  of  its  air  to 
temperaments  such  as  theirs,  they  visit  it 
only  occasionally,  and  tarry  within  it  only 
long  enough  to  collect  rents  or  cut  off 
coupons.  Despite  the  widespread  belief 
that  no  one  lives  in  Chicago  who  is  able 

119 


Chicago 

to  live  elsewhere,  I  doubt  if  even  these 
expatriates  have  ceased  to  regard  it  with 
tender  affection  ;  since  of  all  the  cities  in 
the  land  it  is  most  fervently  loved  by  its 
inhabitants,  and  most  imbued  with  civic 
pride. 

Gun-men  haunt  its  streets,  it  is  true, 
and  a  murder  is  committed  in  them  nearly 
every  day  in  the  year.  Jt  is  smoke-ridden 
and  disfigured  by  factories  and  railway 
yards,  and  many  of  its  streets  are  ill- 
paved.  Moreover,  the  people  who  throng 
them  are  more  carelessly  dressed  than 
those  in  Fifth  Avenue,  and  their  voices 
are  not  so  well  modulated  as  those  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Boston.  Their  manners,  too, 
are  of  the  kind  the  New  Yorker  defines 
as  Western ;  yet  within  their  hearts  there 
is  the  quality  I  have  called  vim^  as  well 
as  an  implicit  belief  in  Chicago  and  its 
future,  which  is  certainly  idealism,  or  akin 
to  it. 

I  20 


fVashington  Street  looking  East  from  Clark  Street 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

The  efFervescent  affection  displayed  by 
Chicagoans  for  their  city  is  often  viewed 
in  the  Hght  of  mere  bluster  by  the  inhab- 
itants of  older  places ;  therefore,  I  was 
overjoyed  not  long  ago  to  find  in  a  book 
of  travel,  entitled  "  By  Motor  to  the  Golden 
Gate,"  the  Chicago  spirit  described  with 
both  truth  and  understanding  by  a  New 
Yorker.  Although  Mrs.  Price  Post,  the 
author  of  this  charming  little  book,  de- 
votes an  entire  chapter  to  Chicago  and 
its  people,  all  of  which  I  should  like  to 
quote,  I  shall  confine  myself  to  this  sym- 
pathetic description  of  the  civic  loyalty  I 
have  been  attempting  to  depict:  — 

The  Chicagoans  love  their  city,  not  as  though 
it  were  a  city  at  all,  but  as  though  it  were  their 
actual  flesh  and  blood.  They  look  at  it  in  the  way 
a  mother  looks  at  her  child,  thinking  it  the  bright- 
est, most  beautiful,  and  wonderful  baby  in  the  whole 
world.  Tell  a  mother  that  Mrs.  Smith's  baby  is  the 
loveliest  and  cleverest  prodigy  you  have  ever  seen, 
and  her  feelings  will  be  those  exactly  of  Chicagoans 

12  1 


Chicago 


if  you  tell  them  anything  that  could  be  construed 
into  an  unfavorable  comparison.  They  can't  bear 
New  York  any  more  than  the  mother  can  bear 
Mrs.  Smith's  baby.  At  the  very  sight  of  a  New 
Yorker  they  nettle  and  their  minds  flurry  around 
and  gather  up  quickly  every  point  of  possible  ad- 
vantage to  their  own  beloved  Chicago.  Not  for  a 
second  am  I  ridiculing  them,  any  more  than  I 
would  ridicule  the  sacredness  of  a  man's  belief  in 
prayer.  Their  love  of  their  city  is  something  won- 
derful, glorious,  sublime.  They  don't  brag  for  the 
sake  of  bragging,  but  they  champion  her  with  every 
last  red  corpuscle  in  their  heart's  blood  because 
they  so  loyally  and  tremendously  care. 

This  is  a  true  analysis  of  the  Chicago 
spirit;  even  the  boasting  of  her  citizens  be- 
ing merely  the  exuberant  loyalty  of  those 
who  love  her  tremendously.  The  New 
Yorker,  or  the  Bostonian,  champions  his 
city,  it  is  true,  but  not,  I  think,  with  every 
last  red  corpuscle  in  his  heart's  blood, 
because  his  city  is  merely  an  inheritance. 
The  Chicagoan,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
helped  to  create  Chicago  by  the  sweat  of 

122 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

his  brow,  consequently,  he  loves  her  as  his 
own  offspring.  He  cannot  bear  New  York 
because  he  knows  that  it  is  a  bigger,  older, 
and  more  sumptuous  city  than  his  own. 
In  argument  he  will  admit  readily  enough 
that  New  York  is  a  wealthier  and  more 
metropolitan  city  than  Chicago,  but  he 
will  deny  that  it  has  more  culture,  and  if 
forced  to  admit  that  Chicago  is  uncouth, 
he  will  say  that  New  York  is  effete  as  well 
as  purse-proud. 

The  New  Yorker  feels  that  the  smart- 
ness and  cosmopolitanism  of  his  city  lend 
an  air  of  distinction  to  an  otherwise  com- 
monplace land;  whereas  the  Chicagoan  is 
proud  of  his  city  because  of  its  intense 
Americanism.  He  knows  that  Chicago  is 
a  stupendous  product  of  the  pioneer  spirit 
which  has  built  the  Nation.  Eighty  years 
ago  it  was  a  frontier  town  of  less  than  five 
thousand  souls;  whereas  to-day  it  is  the 
fourth,  perhaps   the  third,  largest  city  in 

123 


Chicago 

the  world.  Small  wonder,  he  declares,  that 
its  rough  edges  have  not  been  smoothed, 
since  it  has  been  growing  too  fast  to  take 
count  of  its  shortcomings.  Moreover,  it  is 
a  veritable  Babel  in  which  some  thirty  or 
more  tongues  are  spoken;  hence  the  as- 
similation of  its  own  people  is  certainly  its 
most  pressing  task.  A  third  of  its  inhabit- 
ants were  born  in  foreign  lands ;  another 
third  have  foreign-born  parents ;  while  a 
third  of  the  remaining  third  have  an  alien 
father,  or  an  alien  mother,  so  that  of  the 
two  and  a  half  million  people  who  inhabit 
Chicago  barely  a  fourth  are  Americans  of 
the  second  generation.  It  is  in  the  hearts 
of  this  small  minority,  however,  that  its 
moral  achievements  have  been  almost  en- 
tirely conceived. 

Its  materialism  has  been  so  widely 
trumpeted  that  to  extol  its  spirituality  be- 
comes a  civic  duty  on  my  part.  Indeed, 
when  I  reiterate  that  Chicago  is  the  dis- 

I  24 


Park  Row  at  the  Railway  Station 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

tributing  centre  of  the  United  States,  as 
well  as  the  largest  grain  market  and  great- 
est producer  of  packing-house  products, 
agricultural  implements,  and  ready-made 
clothing  in  the  world,  it  is  by  way  of 
offering  a  contrast  to  the  fact  that  it  has 
the  largest  art  school  in  the  land. 

Furthermore,  its  university  has  an  en- 
rollment of  over  eight  thousand  students; 
while  Northwestern  University,  with  some 
five  thousand  more,  although  situated  in 
a  suburb,  is  in  reality  one  of  Chicago's 
institutions  of  learning.  Indeed,  if  the 
faculties  and  students  of  technical  schools 
such  as  the  Armour  and  Lewis  Institutes 
and  those  of  small  colleges  such  as  Lake 
Forest  be  added  to  the  faculties  and  stu- 
dents of  the  city's  two  great  universities 
and  its  numerous  medical  colleges,  and  a 
count  be  taken,  as  well,  of  its  professors 
and  students  of  art,  music,  or  the  drama, 
and   the   teachers  in   its  public  schools,  I 

125 


Chicago 

venture  to  predict  that  the  studious  pop- 
ulation of  Chicago  will  be  found  to  be 
quite  as  large  as  that  of  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  Peoria,  the  second  city  in  the 
State. 

Chicago  has  its  own  opera  company 
and  two  symphony  orchestras,  and  a  pub- 
lic library  which,  in  the  circulation  of 
books,  stands  second  in  the  United  States. 
Furthermore,  it  has  two  notable  libraries 
which  are  privately  endowed,  as  well  as 
a  great  museum  of  natural  history,  and 
an  art  museum  which  is  visited  by  more 
people  than  any  art  museum  in  the  coun- 
try. Its  citizens  contribute  annually  about 
seven  million  dollars  to  organized  charity, 
and  millions  more  to  education,  or  what 
the  newspapers  style  "the  uplift."  More- 
over, it  has  an  aesthetic  scheme  for  its  own 
beautification  which  is  fondly  called  the 
« Chicago  Plan."  One  by  one  the  prin- 
cipal features  of  this  plan  are  being  exe- 

I  26 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

cuted;  hence  the  dream  of  a  "city  beau- 
tiful" bids  fair  to  come  true  before  the 
city  is  a  century  old.  Indeed,  I  feel  that 
boastful  Chicagoans,  like  myself,  are  jus- 
tified in  declaring  that  the  growth  of  our 
city's  soul  has  been  even  more  astonish- 
ing than  that  of  its  body. 

Other  cities  have  universities,  opera 
companies,  and  museums,  and  plans  for 
their  own  betterment,  it  is  true,  and  per- 
haps their  citizens  are  even  more  generous 
to  charity  than  Chicagoans;  yet  I  believe 
that  their  "uplifters"  are  less  strenuous 
than  ours  and  their  sense  of  civic  duty  less 
pervading.  Though  life  in  industrial  Chi- 
cago is  nerve-wrecking,  it  is  as  naught  to 
that  led  by  the  zealous  citizens  who  pon- 
der sociological  problems  while  they  bolt 
their  luncheons,  and  rush  from  committee 
meeting  to  committee  meeting,  in  the  firm 
belief  that  all  the  burdens  of  humanity  are 
theirs  to  alleviate. 

127 


Chicago 

This  strenuous  altruism  is  most  deeply 
embedded  in  the  hearts  of  our  women,  who 
play,  it  seems  to  me,  a  more  active  part  in 
public  affairs  than  do  their  sisters  of  the 
East.  They  play  it  capably,  too,  as  well  as 
ardently,  —  an  observation  which  has  led 
me  to  believe  that  the  homes  of  those 
Chicagoans  whose  wives  are  "uplifters" 
are  quite  as  serene  as  those  of  the  conserv- 
ative men  of  an  older  school  whose  wives 
yawn  placidly  over  their  knitting. 

Yet  back  of  Chicago's  strenuousness  and 
vim  stands  the  spirit  of  her  founders  hold- 
ing her  in  leash,  the  tenets  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  being  still  a  potent  factor  in  her 
life.  They  are  in  constant  conflict,  how- 
ever, with  those  of  other  faiths,  Chicago 
being  a  forum  as  well  as  a  melting-pot  in 
which  Puritanism  is  but  one  of  the  almost 
countless  "isms"  which  are  being  upheld 
within  her  vast  limits  in  nearly  all  the 
tongues  of  Europe  and  the  Orient. 

128 


The  Soul  of  the  City 

"Hog  Butcher,  Tool-Maker, Stacker  of 
Wheat,  Player  with  Railroads, and  Freight- 
Handler  to  the  Nation,"  as  one  of  her  own 
poets  has  called  her,  this  city,  whose  shoul- 
ders are  big,  is  likewise  a  city  whose  en- 
thusiasms are  strong.  Moreover,  as  an 
inheritance,  she  possesses  a  New  England 
conscience  to  leaven  her  diverse  char- 
acter and  make  her  truly  —  the  pulse  of 
America. 


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